





















Class_ ) L, 7° 

Book i . 

Copyright N°_ 'Zl 

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 






















LITTLE BLACK DOG 

ROBERT HERRICK 














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Mickey 









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LITTLE BLACK DOG 


ROBERT HERRICK 


1 

’HOMAS S. ROCKWELL COMPANT 

Y 


CHICAGO 

1931 


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QLT95 
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COPYRIGHT, 1931, BY 
THOMAS S. ROCKWELL COMPANY 
CHICAGO 



Printed in United States of America 


©CIA 38471*./ 



MAY 27 1931 


PREFACE 


“You seem to consider Mickey an exceptional dog,” 
wrote the Son-of-the-House to his parent on hearing of 
the present undertaking, and added in mild irony,— 
“Do you think he has the power of reasoning? . . . 

He is a nice enough little dog, but there are too many 
dog books anyway.” 

No doubt there are too many books of a certain kind 
written about dogs—those that represent them as human 
beings with a superhuman cleverness and agility of mind; 
those that sentimentally endow a dog with much of 
our own deplorable mentality and try to squeeze a drivel¬ 
ing tear from readers jaded with jazz and gin. 

That is not my intention in making this little book, 
however much I may have failed in giving a faithful 
picture of Mickey. I do not consider him above nor¬ 
mal either as a dog or as a human being. As to the 
“power of reasoning,” after recent deliverances of the 
new psychology I do not believe that any self-respecting 
dog would care to be endowed with the power to reason 
like human beings. The famous faculty of human reason 
still remains obscure both in origin and in function, 
and its exercise (as in the case of the War and the Peace) 


PREFACE 


is too often lamentable in result to be a source of much 
pride. 

That there are so many books written about dogs would 
seem to indicate that human beings find in these animal 
friends something lacking in themselves, or if not wholly 
lacking at least exemplified in animals more immediately 
and beautifully than in their fellow men. There cannot 
be too many books about dogs of the sort that merely 
present them as they seem to the writer, and do not 
interpret or sentimentalize or romanticize them, above all, 
do not read into them the complexities of human psychol¬ 
ogy, new or old! 

No one can observe a child or an animal closely, 
with the added divination of affection, without knowing 
beyond argument that their world differs fundamentally 
from that which human beings share with them. It is 
not a question of their world being better or worse than 
ours, higher or lower—it is different. And the degree 
of this difference we are able only approximately to de¬ 
termine, just as they can only approximately compre¬ 
hend the human world. In some notable respects they 
seem to understand our world (foolish as it must at 
times appear to them) better than we do theirs. That 
is no doubt because their happiness depends upon some 
sort of adjustment with these tyrants of life, while we 
to our loss can go roughshod and unheeding to our 
opaque ends without understanding anybody but our 
precious selves and little enough of them! 

There are certain aspects of the dog world as I have 
vi 


PREFACE 


guessed it which arouse my admiration; there are other 
aspects that I do not pretend to fathom. It would not 
be well, obviously, for human beings to become like dogs, 
even were that possible. On the other hand no under¬ 
standing person would wish dogs to become more like 
human beings at the inevitable sacrifice of their most 
precious qualities. “Progress,” even the power of speech, 
for a dog does not mean imitating his human com¬ 
panions; it means quite simply being the most of a 
dog he can be. A truth of wide application that all 
of us might take to heart! . . . 

So I have tried in the following pages to present 
Mickey as I have found him during the one year of 
his life, not as a paragon nor as a phenomenon—half 
angel and half beast—but as a small, eager, lovable, 
affectionate creature, with whom I have come to have 
an ever deeper understanding and more numerous con¬ 
tacts. It is largely because I and Capable Katie, his 
other near friend, have tried consistently to respect his 
dog nature while admitting him to a plane of intimate 
companionship that I know him as well as I do. He has 
taught me far more than I have been able to teach him, 
and he has given me a much richer treasure than the sim¬ 
ple food and shelter he gets from me. 

Winter Park, Florida . 


vii 









(Contents. 


I 

Village Dog 

13 

II 

Mickey’s Way 

26 

III 

Habits 

43 

IV 

Punishment 

54 

V 

New Friends 

69 

VI 

Change 

89 

VII 

The Journey 

103 

VIII 

Mickey’s Gang 

117 

IX 

The Bitch Question Again 

128 

X 

Renunciation 

143 

XI 

Home, Real Home Again 

164 


XII The Deeper Understanding 


<*©(>- 


178 

















LITTLE BLACK DOG 

ROBERT HERRICK 


Chapter I 
VILLAGE DOG 

T HAT one is the better specimen of the breed,” the 
dog expert said, pointing to the smaller of the two 
furry black puppies, “he has all the points,” and he expa¬ 
tiated on size, color, hocks, and so on. But the man’s eyes 
rested on his less recommended brother with whom Ca¬ 
pable Katie (whose idea it had been to examine these dogs 
on the recommendation of the chore boy) was playing. 
There was something ingratiating in the friendly assur¬ 
ance with which the larger puppy met us, wagging his 
plumy stump of a tail, wriggling his little round body 
and licking Katie’s hand with his tiny red tongue. He 
was happy, confident. He might lack some of the points 
of his breed, displayed by his more sluggish brother, but 
as a dog person who might become a member of his 
small household—which is what the man was looking 
for—the larger puppy had a greater attraction, charm, 
personality, whatever it is that draws one being to an¬ 
other. It was easy to see that Katie felt the same way. 
She hardly noticed the superior pup. . . . 

“I don’t know that I want either one,” the man said 
cautiously after further inspection. “We are just look¬ 
ing about. ... I don’t much care for Poms.” 


13 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


“I can give you a splendid pedigree,” the dog man 
insinuated. “The mother there got a ribbon at the Madi¬ 
son Square Show and the grandfather-” 

The man waved this aside lightly, skeptical of the 
authenticity of pedigrees, which for dogs as well as for 
the ambitious rich are easily faked, and aware that any 
pedigree could not compensate for the lack of some of 
the qualities he hoped to find in his dog. The dogs 
he knew best, the two of his Neighbor-on-the-Left as well 
as the wire haired fox of the Neighbor-Across-the-Way 
abounded in pedigree, but none of them attracted him; 
neither the Blue Bedlington nor the White West High¬ 
lander (both of whom were replete in all the points of 
their respective breeds) was the sort of dog he wanted 
chewing his hearth rug or destroying his garden. . . . 

“Well . . . we’ll let you know,” he said dubiously 
when he was back in the car. Katie, as she let in the 
clutch, looked over her shoulder at the two puppies 
who were being replaced in the wire cage with their 
mother. The bigger one ran immediately to the wire, 
grasped it, and standing up his full ten inches peered 
out between the meshes. He seemed sorry to see the 
strangers depart; they made a welcome diversion in the 
monotonous life of his home. 

“All the same, he’s a cunning little devil,” said Katie 
with a distinct note of regret, the first that she had ex¬ 
pressed in all the many trips she had made that summer 
to various kennels in search of the one right dog. Not 
even the lordly white Samoyedes had extracted that 


14 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


tribute. Nor the Boston bull nor the lovely tawny collie 
nor all the others that ranged from spaniels to police dogs 
and poodles. For her the little black Pom had clicked, 
as they say today, and the choice was settled except to 
persuade the Boss. 

“He’s no doubt mongrel . . . just village dog,” 
the Boss remarked. 

“He looks healthy, and the man said he had a pedigree.” 

(H ow often the Boss had said he wanted a dog, just 
dog, no matter about pedigree, Katie reflected, and now 
Chance offered him one and he was objecting to the pup 
because of the pedigree. So like a man and the Boss!) 

“Pomeranian? He’s too big for a real Pom. . . . 

Just lap dogs anyhow!” 

“That ain’t no lap dog,”‘Katie stoutly demurred. 

Her heart was won, a loyal, single-track heart, which 
might forego its desires but never its judgments. 

“We’ll see,” the man replied evasively, adding, “Poms! 
I never liked them . . . But he can’t be pure Pom, 

too large and too black—they’re brown.” 

Capable Katie drove the car over the ruts and said 
nothing. She was a pragmatist (without knowing it) 
and had her own simple way of juggling the balls of 
chance when she could, with a sly tap here and there. 

It was a lovely Sunday morning a week later. The 
Boss, smoking a pipe, came out of the house and strolled 
uphill to the terrace where the roses were coming into 
full bloom. He was on his morning inspection of his 


IS 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


two acres—the “Estate” as his neighbors mockingly called 
the place, because it contained a little of everything, except 
a dog. There at the rose terrace stood Katie with the 
chore boy and between them on the ground was a fuzzy 
black ball with a plumy tail. He was looking question- 
ingly up into Katie’s face, one black little paw raised 
in an attitude which was to become very familiar, an 
amiable question mark, quizzical and persistent. Seeing 
the Boss approach he started for him wiggling his black 
plume delightedly—a new distraction. The Boss leaned 
over to pat him, and that being something of an exertion 
he picked up the fluffy black ball and looked into its 
little round brown eyes. There was a sweet puppyish 
smell to the furry little body. The Boss presently handed 
the black ball to Katie who cuddled the puppy in her 
bare arms. He licked her hand with his little red tongue 
to express satisfaction. 

“What’s his name?” the Boss asked the chore boy 
irrelevantly. 

“We call him Mickey,” said Albert. 

The Boss chuckled a few moments and said, “It seems 
to fit!” Then, “Katie, will you fetch my check book?” 
and Katie’s short legs flew down the grass path. . . . 

“There!” said the Boss gruffly, tearing a check from 
the book. “Remember he is your dog, and you will have 
all the bother with him. See he doesn’t dig in the gardens 
or ruin the rugs,” and he walked off swinging his cane and 
puffing his pipe bossily as though to say, “That’s that!” 


16 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


The chore boy’s rattly car dashed down the road. The 
Boss returning from his stroll found Katie with her 
black pup on the kitchen porch, a saucer of warm milk 
before them in which some bread was soaking. 

“Can he eat?” the Boss asked. 

“He’s trying his best—he’s just five weeks old!” 

“He’ll learn when he’s hungry,” the Boss remarked. 

But Katie, taking the soft bread in her hand, was 
inserting it gently into the small red mouth, saying 
encouragingly, “Try to swallow it Tiddliewinks—that’s 
a good pup!” 

The puppy did try, gulped convulsively a couple of 
times, wagged his plume appreciatively and stuck his 
little black snout into the dish for more. Patiently, slowly, 
Katie thus inserted his first meal into the red throat, while 
Mickey wagged his plume and wiggled his round body 
in his anxiety to co-operate. When he had had enough 
he put his front paws on Katie’s lap and licked her hand. 
Then he stood off and looked inquiringly into the 
kitchen. 

“No, you can’t go inside until you learn your manners,” 
Katie said firmly. Mickey waddled off toward the big 
apple tree. He had a funny gait, his small round body 
rolling and his plumy tail waving over his rump. . . . 

“I can give you his real pedigree,” the Boss said after 
further study of the finely pointed snout, the stiff little 
ears, the beady eyes. “His great-great-great grandfather 
was a small black bear and his great-great-great grand¬ 
mother was a little black fox.” 


17 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


“Maybe,” Katie agreed with peasant caution. 

“It was a runaway marriage with the relatives on both 
sides objecting to the misalliance.” . . . 

“What’s all that?” a voice behind the two demanded. 

It was the Neighbor-on-the-Left, the owner of the two 
highly pedigreed dogs, both exceedingly yappy and too 
precious to be allowed to move a step without their leads. 
As a result of being housed in such rigid exclusiveness 
summer and winter, and fed on the latest dog diet 
consisting largely of raw meat, they were inclined to be 
snappish. 

“That’s the new member of the household,” the man 
said, appreciating the critical lift of his neighbor’s eye¬ 
brows, a good woman but conservative in her sympathies. 
. . . “Let me introduce you to Mickey.” 

The pup gave a quick glance at the new stranger, then 
trotted over and jumping up waved his tail in friendly 
greeting. 

“What do they call it?” the lady asked, somewhat 
mollified by Mickey’s ingratiating manner. “He’s a cute 
little thing!” 

“He’s a Pom and has a fine pedigree,” the Boss replied 
promptly, no doubt despising himself for his quick con¬ 
cession to the snobbish standards of the kennel. 

“A Pom! He’s too big—look at those feet! . . . 

More like a Chow,” remarked the lady’s husband, who 
had joined them. 

“He has a red mouth and a red tongue,” the Boss 
objected. Mickey obligingly exhibited both as he greeted 


18 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


the newcomer in the same enthusiastic manner he had 
for all human acquaintances. 

“I can give you his pedigree,” the Boss protested 
cringingly, “his mother won a prize ... oh, hell, 
his real pedigree is Black Bear out of Black Fox and 
that’s good enough for me!” 

“Why did you get a Pom?” the Neighbors-on-the- 
Left chorused in derogatory tones. 

“What’s the matter with Poms?” the Boss retorted 
defensively. “I’m not buying a pedigree—I want a dog! 
. . . You can call him the Village Dog, and he’ll 
become the founder of a new family like the Bedlingtons 
or the Sealyhams. They aren’t so well established either 
—do you remember Paul’s dog?” 

This was not a tactful reference to a near relative of 
his neighbor’s terrier, a fat clumsy beast that came from 
a famous line of pets but showed such unmistakable 
resemblance to one side of his ancestry that he was given 
away to the gardener. The Boss knew it was a sore point, 
but the snobbish tendencies of his good neighbors had 
long irritated him. . . . The lady lifted a scornful 
lip at this remark; it was an old controversy between them. 
She considered the Boss a bit “queer” in his “notions.” 

“He’s cunning at any rate,” she admitted as Katie 
jealously seized the object of their debate and bore him 
away to her kitchen. 

“Yes, he’s a nice pup,” agreed her husband more 
heartily. 

“Almost any puppy is cunning,” the lady observed. 


19 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


“But you can’t tell what he may be like when he grows 
up ” 

He realized this was meant as a warning to him for 
having taken a “mongrel” into his home. . . . 

“Nor can you about our young!” the Boss retorted. 
“You have to take a chance.” 

Soon the Neighbors left, and the Boss, lighting his pipe 
afresh, sat on his quiet veranda reflecting on the topic 
raised by his visitors. It was singular, he thought, ironical, 
the deadly seriousness people like these neighbors exhibited 
over the selection of their dogs, their insistence upon 
purity of breed, a registered pedigree, while they were so 
careless of their own. His Neighbor-on-the-Left, for 
example, coming from a mingling of Irish, Dutch, and 
English blood, was quite “mongrel” in fact; yet the 
various strains haphazardly intermixed had produced a 
satisfactory, able and kindly type of human being, 
possessing many valued virtues. The lady’s descent, it 
happened, was less mixed and varied although not lofty 
from the breeder’s narrow point of view. As for the 
friends and acquaintances of this agreeable couple (and 
of himself) nothing more interesting could be said of 
their pedigrees (where they were known) except for the 
Manxes, whose swarthy complexions were attributed to 
a dash of “color” derived from some Carolinean ancestor. 
But the family having lived down the social stigma were 
now in fact rather proud of the differentiation it made 
for them in the common run of “old southern families.” 
There were, he reflected, a few well known stocks among 


20 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


the one hundred and twenty odd millions of Americans— 
but how very few! And from what one read about them 
in newspapers or observed in one’s own experience how 
rarely did members of these distinguished pedigreed 
family stocks justify any great interest! 

When it came to dogs it was another matter altogether 
it seemed. The individual dog did not count until he 
could establish an unblemished descent from recognized 
(and registered) ancestors. The Boss had learned that 
these last months since he had tried to acquire a dog 
inmate for his household and had visited kennels and 
corresponded with owners, dog fanciers, and officers of 
dog societies to that end. First he had investigated the 
Samoyedes. The Samoyedes, he learned from a volum¬ 
inous correspondence extending into half a dozen states, 
were of an ancient Asiatic lineage, just being introduced 
to the western scene, and thus had a rarity value jealously 
cultivated by the breeders. To his dismay he had learned 
from the secretary of the Samoyede Society that all 
“runts” (dubious offsprings), any pup in a litter that did 
not meet the society’s strict specifications of what a 
Samoyede should be in weight, color, size, build, and so 
on, were killed. He thought regretfully of instances 
where some Samoyede variant from the established 
standard, who might all the same have possessed the 
peculiar qualities he cared for, had been ruthlessly put 
out of existence. Just because his color was a bit “off,” 
or his weight too much or too little, or the shape of his 
rump wrong! 


21 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


Further, through his search he learned of the bewilder¬ 
ing variety of dog breeds now being touted by fanciers. 
Many of these fashionable breeds seemed to him quite 
homely and uninteresting, as dogs. But they had 
acquired the scarcity and fashion prestige which for a 
time made their existence secure. That alone would 
propagate them no matter how inferior they might be to 
chance specimens of nature’s own haphazard selection. 
Beauty of form and color and shape had little to do with 
a dog’s rating outside his class. Nor—what was to him 
of vastly more importance—the individual character of the 
animal in question. If a pup didn’t show the proper 
“points” he might possess all the qualities of a dog angel, 
yet he was a “runt,” a “mongrel” not fit for a respectable 
home. Silly! 

It was but another instance of the collector’s craze, 
which he had so often met in his own special field of 
books. The contents of a book mattered little to a 
collector compared with its special form and markings, 
its scarcity, its rating as a collector’s piece. Did the 
volume have a certain mistake in the title-page? Were 
the leaves uncut showing that the contents were of so 
little interest to its previous owners that they had not cared 
to depreciate its possible future value in the collector’s 
market? Did it have deckled edges—a hideous device!— 
and the correct book-plate? Just human folly, all that, 
neglecting the original purpose of an object, which alone 
gave just standards of value, to establish an exclusive 
scarcity value, whimsical and fanciful standards, which 


22 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


had nothing to do with the true character of the object. 

No, he would not even take the trouble to telephone 
the dog man for Mickey’s supposed pedigree; he would 
not be bullied by the snob opinion of his good Neighbors. 
Let them enjoy their sense of superiority through the 
ownership of pedigreed dogs. Mickey should remain for 
him “Village Dog” and be considered solely for his own 
worth as a dog, for his own looks, intelligence, and 
character. What nature had done for him at the start 
was satisfactory. What she might do with him in his 
development was of course problematic as with all her 
children. He had had enough dealings with the young 
to be well aware of the risks. . . . But those risks 

as far as this pup went he had somehow felt like under¬ 
taking. He was willing to bet on Mickey—as a dog. 
Nurture, not Nature, had been the guiding theory of 
his own life, and he was ready to put it to the test once 
more in the case of this small animal: what could he and 
Capable Katie do to evoke whatever quality of mind and 
heart this small bundle of black fur had hidden away 
in him? . . . 


At this point the Boss went out to Katie’s realm to 
learn what was happening to the new member of the 
household. Katie, the day’s task largely behind her, 
was sitting in a rocking chair with the small bundle of 
dog asleep in her lap, reading the Times . Mickey opened 
one alert beady eye when the Boss scratched his head, 
showing that he had not really been asleep. 


23 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


“Has he cried?” the Boss inquired. 

“No. . . . But I guess he misses his home,” Katie 

replied. 

“Where will he stay tonight?” 

“I’ll fix a box on the porch.” 

“Won’t he be lonely there?” 

“Perhaps—but he’s got to learn to be alone,” Katie 
said severely. “I’ll not have a dog messing about in my 
room. The porch is the proper place. When it gets too 
cold Albert can make him a little house to sleep in.” 

“He’s very small,” the Boss observed, knowing Katie’s 
firm standards for herself and others, also her warm heart. 

The new member of the family stretched himself on 
Katie’s lap and yawning revealed a nice set of first teeth. 
He had no doubts about Katie; he had accepted her in 
exchange for his little black mother. 

The Boss went back to his own quarters, thinking of 
Katie and pedigrees. There was not an instance of purer 
breed in the whole township than this Celtic woman. 
Yet it was not her unbroken descent from a long line of 
Irish peasants, running perhaps for a thousand years and 
more, that had endowed her with certain rare and precious 
human qualities, with her sturdy independence, her deep 
loyalty, her keen sense of rectitude, her sympathy with 
all suffering, so that no hungry animal, no forlorn being 
could pass her door without a helping hand being reached 
out. No, these significant qualities, as characteristic of 
Capable Katie as her Celtic lilt and her Celtic humor, 
were inborn, her own, her individual mark, which did 


24 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


not come to her from her thousand year ancestors, how¬ 
ever worthy or vile they might have been as individuals. 

He wondered, as he undressed, where the newcomer 
was spending his first night in his new home. He did 
not believe it would be alone in a box on the kitchen 
porch, mild as the summer night seemed to be. 


25 


Chapter II 
MICKEY’S WAY 

M ICKEY appeared the next morning with the 
breakfast tray, in which he was much interested. 
“Where did he spend the night?” the Boss inquired, 
letting Mickey chew at his fingers. 

Katie did not reply immediately, then with a conscious 
laugh,- 

“He didn’t sleep outside!” 

“I thought he wouldn’t!” 

“It was too lonesome for him his first night away from 
his mother and brother.” 

“So you put him in the kitchen?” 

“But he didn’t stay there long either!” 

And the way in which Mickey won his first victory 
came out. 

“I put him in a basket with an old blanket, but he 
got out and followed me upstairs as far as the turn and 
there he couldn’t go either way and he began to cry, 
just a little whimper. So I took him down to his basket 
and wrapped him in the blanket and he did it all over. 
Then I took the basket upstairs and put him in it. After 
I was in bed I heard him trying to get out. It wasn’t 
long before he came over and reached up on his hind 


26 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


legs as far as he could. When I turned on the light he 
was standing there wagging his stump of a tail, asking 
to be taken up. . . . So he slept on my bed and 

was as quiet as a lamb all night.” 

(And there he has continued to sleep every night of 
his life since!) 

Characteristically, with a minimum of fuss or com¬ 
plaint, Mickey having decided what he wanted had 
persisted until he got it. Nothing more was heard from 
Katie about “dogs being kept in their place,” and not 
being underfoot in her kitchen or sleeping on her bed 
the way the dog next door slept on its mistress’s couch. 

The Boss wondered what would happen when Katie 
went out some evening as she so often did with her 
friends. An occasion came the next night. Katie was 
invited to a party where there would be dancing and 
card playing and she would not return until late. The 
Boss expected that he would have to take charge of 
Mickey, but nothing was said. Katie had her own way 
of managing her problems, big and little. The car went 
out of the garage road and up the hill past the house 
and all was quiet in the rear. The pup must already be 
asleep. But the next morning with breakfast and Mickey 
came the story. 

“Sure, Mickey went to the party with me and he was 
a great success,” Katie confessed. “I tried shutting him 
up in my bathroom first, but he whimpered and carried 
on so, I was afraid he might disturb you; so I took him 
along with me to the Goodalls.” 

27 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


“What did you do with him there?” 

“Everybody made a lot of him, of course. When we 
danced he ran around after me, so I put him on my coat 
in a corner and he went to sleep and slept there all the 
evening.” 

Thus Mickey began his life of “going out” at this 
early age. Although until the past week he had seen no 
human beings other than the dog man and his family, 
Mickey from the beginning was always friendly, eager 
to make new acquaintances, to add to his circle of human 
friends. His confiding friendliness, his social gift, 
remained quite marked, yet withal he discriminated subtly 
among persons as will be seen. And he never neglected 
duty, business, such as “minding the car” from amiability! 


Those first weeks Mickey spent most of the daylight 
hours on the stoop outside the kitchen door, above the 
ash cans, where he could peer through the screen and 
see what Katie was about or observe conveniently all that 
was going on around the place. Occasionally as she 
passed near the door Katie addressed a remark to 
“Tiddliewinks” (her favorite nickname at this period). 
She talked to the pup as if he were a knowing child 
always, and she stoutly maintained that Mickey under¬ 
stood whatever was said to him. Whether he did or not 
he gave it invariably a close attention, listening to Katie’s 
easy flow of words as though he caught the drift, as one 
not quite familiar with a foreign language listens, 


28 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


permitting the native to do most of the talking. No doubt 
the intelligent, responsive quality of Mickey’s companion¬ 
ship was developed by this habit of listening to the human 
tongue, not merely in scolding or petting or commanding, 
but in sociable discourse. Katie’s conversation was a 
constant appeal to him for co-operation to which he 
responded even as a puppy with remarkable awareness. 

How much does a bright dog understand of human 
speech? This became among Mickey’s friends an inter¬ 
esting topic for discussion and experiment. Words, 
names, easily and early, as a puppy, then phrases calling 
for habitual actions, like, “Go find the Boss!” Until it 
became almost uncanny the amount that Mickey must 
have comprehended of the conversation going on around 
him—when it had anything to do with him or his 
immediate interest, such as a walk or motor ride or other 
expedition! (In this respect not unlike most people who 
give serious attention in any debate only to what concerns 
themselves especially.) Perhaps a dog absorbs the meaning 
of words by wave lengths of sound, some being received 
by his brain and others completely ignored, as in a hubbub 
of foreign tongues unconsciously one sorts from the 
medley of speech that which has meaning to one’s 
intelligence. At any rate, in Mickey’s case the number 
and variety of such comprehensible wave lengths or 
phrases increased rapidly as his contacts with life grew 
and his needs increased. When the foreman on a job 
near by where there was blasting to be done notified the 
Boss of a coming explosion, Mickey did not have to be 


29 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


told to come in doors—he was already at the door, tail 
down—he hated all sudden noises, waiting to be let in. 
Nor was it the sight of the man himself that warned 
Mickey of the coming disagreeable experience, for he 
knew him well and at other times would run to him at 
once. The part that human speech played in Mickey’s 
understanding, however, was usually mixed with his other, 
more obscure means for gathering information, such as 
close observation, scent, etc. Departures from the house, 
for instance, about which Mickey seemed always informed 
in advance he may have gathered from observing the 
clothes worn and the operation of packing and other 
preparations. Yet when all allowance is made for these 
sources of information, a residue remained for which 
speech alone accounted. And no one could note Mickey’s 
close attention, the reflection of emotion in his mobile 
face without believing that he “knew” much of what was 
being said to him by way of words. So Katie was not 
far wrong in her assertion, and her conversational habits 
no doubt had much to do with developing Mickey’s 
expanding intelligence. . . . 

He did not go far from the kitchen door those first 
few days, because he did not like venturing out of sight 
of his chosen protector, in whom he placed perfect trust. 
Moreover, kitchen activities interested him greatly; they 
were mostly concerned with food to which he paid an 
increasing attention, as he rapidly discovered its various 
satisfactions. From his lookout on the stoop behind the 
ash cans there were many things to watch and learn— 


30 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


butterflies and birds, Jerry the gardener, not to speak of 
the iceman and milkman and delivery boys, and the 
daily come and go of the small household. For a six 
weeks’ old creature he had a power of silent observation 
that a well-conditioned baby might have envied. A whole 
new world of phenomena opened daily before his keen 
senses which he cautiously explored; the sunlight mottled 
by the overhanging grapevine, occasionally a dried leaf 
floating down within reach of his paw, or a robin flying 
in and out of the nest on the trellis, which in itself was a 
thrilling mystery. 

When Katie opened the screen door with a dish of 
scraps in one hand, Mickey followed her to the henyard 
behind the woodshed, racing and jumping in a vain effort 
to reach her burden. Never being admitted to the hen- 
yard he would climb atop of the big boulder beside the 
run and watch the feeding of the hens through the wire; 
in time he made a little track just outside the high fence 
by following the hens around their inclosure, with no 
effort to get at them but a lively interest in their desultory 
movements. Afterwards there was the pungent interior 
of the woodshed where Katie stopped for a handful of 
chips; the woodshed was redolent of rats, mice, squirrels, 
and Mickey eagerly sniffed it all over. . . . These 

frequent trips up the grassy path by the rose terraces to 
the woodshed and the hens were a sufficient thrill for 
weeks. It was enough to dance alongside Katie striving to 
gain her sole attention by snapping at her sweater, his little 
eyes always fixed upon her face. It was one of his 
31 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


prettiest, most familiar attitudes, that of the eager, black 
little face with the fox nose, the pricked up pointed ears 
taking in every one of the soft words that Katie let 
drop in a gentle stream of admonition, praise, advice. 

“Now Mick, darling, you mustn’t tear this sweater; 
it’s the last I’ve got without a hole in it. Sure nobody 
gives me a new coat for my back like what you’ve got, 
free, for nothing! . . . No, this is for the hens, not 

for you, my dear. You’ve had enough for two of your 
size and the Boss says you are getting to roll like a 
pig. . . ” 

Once to Mickey’s delight a hen escaped, flew over 
the wire. He ran after it, no doubt to examine it more 
closely—he was never known to hurt another animal— 
and the hen with terrified squawks running into the pine 
woods beyond the garage Mickey raced on after it, 
through brambles and bushes, between boulders, until 
suddenly he stopped, head erect, listening. It was not 
to Katie’s shrill call, love her as much as he did he had 
no idea of obedience at this time, but because he had 
suddenly become aware of the strange dark world of 
the close pines. There Katie recovered him, his head 
cocked upwards, trying to descry the bird that was cheep¬ 
ing at him from the tree, quite forgetful of the hen. 
Katie bore him back to the house with many reproaches 
and admonitions. But from that chance experience he 
added another enticing area to his little world, the pine 
woods, and began to venture there by himself, first to 
the edge of the garage path where he would stand and 


32 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


look in; as he grew bigger and more confident he would 
creep within the shade of the first pines stealthily, then 
stop, paw in air, listening like a tiny Siegfried, to the 
wondrous bird notes coming from within the wood. 
p p 

He chased butterflies until he took to the more difficult 
pursuit of birds and grasshoppers, best of all. As the 
summer waxed there were numerous grasshoppers that 
made enormous leaps in arcs from the path. Micky 
would stop, peer into the tangled grass, and then pounce 
with all his might, lifting his hind quarters in the air, 
emerging after a while, sometimes with a hopper in his 
mouth—which always escaped. All that first summer 
when he had nothing better to do he chased these agile, 
long-legged creatures, made for a small dog’s sport. 
. . . But everything living and inanimate seemed 

created for Mickey’s diversion. Leaves were an unfailing 
provocation (until he learned why they rustled over the 
ground). He would chase a leaf through the gardens, 
capture it, roll over and over with it between his paws— 
or a bit of wood—and lying on his back, legs kicking in 
the air, emit squeals of ecstatic delight over his new 
treasure. Almost anything was good enough to play 
with, sticks and stones, butterflies and leaves and birds, 
the Boss’s green wrapper at breakfast time, the grass rug 
on the big veranda. He was soon taught to discriminate 
between the articles within the house he might safely 
play with and the forbidden ones. Once he forgot and 
chewed the hearth rug in the living room, but Katie 


33 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


having liberally sprinkled its edge with paprika it was 
never again disturbed. According to the Boss’s decree 
one article in each room Mickey was free to play with, and 
usually he kept to the unwritten compact. 

Anything that moved attracted Mickey in these puppy 
days; birds and butterflies, leaves and waving grass, but 
especially anything in human hands, like Katie’s duster 
or mop, or the garden tools, whose manipulation he took 
as an invitation to a game. Mickey attacked the spade, 
the rake, the hoe, and operations in the garden were 
considerably retarded while Jerry tried to cope with 
Mickey’s interference. . . . 

“You little black devil, let that alone!” became a com¬ 
mon objurgation. If the Boss strolled over to the scene 
of conflict and rolling the pup on his back remonstrated 
with him Mickey, immediately distracted, pounced on 
the Boss’s cane and ran off with it. 

“You can’t do nothin’,” Jerry grumbled, “when he’s 
around.” 

All the same Jerry was most careful not to hurt the 
small nuisance. Mickey’s obvious good nature—and his 
charm—saved him from punishment always. 

“He jes’ wants to play all the time,” Jerry added, re¬ 
moving his hat from the puppy’s reach. Mickey then 
started for the hose that Jerry was placing. He got his 
small mouth around the thick hose and sticking his 
short feet down hard in the grass pulled and yanked, his 
black plume waving excitedly, showing remarkable 
strength for his size. He weighed then only ten pounds. 


34 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


“He jes’ wants to play all the time!” That was the 
joyous note of Mickey’s character, and every hour he 
found new playthings in this glorious world he was ex¬ 
ploring, new mischiefs. . . . 

“We shall have to build a pen for him,” the Boss said 
at last, reluctantly, “where we’ll put him when he’s too 
lively.” 

So a roll of wire netting was bought, and Jerry brought 
a hammer and posts. Mickey watched the building of 
his pen from his dais on the kitchen stoop, for Katie had 
induced the Boss to put the pen under the trees by the 
back door, “where Mick won’t be so lonesome sitting by 
himself.” 

When it was completed, a little irregular enclosure 
about a dozen feet each way, Katie selected a nice clean 
box and lined it with burlap, put a broken bowl with 
water and a handful of puppy biscuit beside it and 
Mickey was introduced to his new home. A young pine 
tree that shaded the spot was dropping flaky brown 
needles, which was the first thing to catch Mickey’s at¬ 
tention and next was a bird. He did not in the least 
object to being caged or take it as a punishment, to the 
surprise of the Boss. He even seemed to like it! He 
enjoyed his box, especially on hot days, where, lying at 
full length, nose between paws, he peered through the 
wire mesh at the moving world outside. It was only 
when Katie came from the back door bound up the path 
to the woodshed that he stood on his hind legs, holding 
to the wire and yelped for freedom. Katie usually leaned 


35 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


over the wire and lifted him out with one hand and 
when the errand was finished he was quite content to 
be returned to the cage in the same manner. It was 
his resting and retiring place where he could doze away 
the warm midday hours without being disturbed by com¬ 
mands or caresses. Indeed, later, after he had learned 
how to escape by clambering up the wire and tumbling 
over the top he would sometimes voluntarily return to 
captivity in order to have a nap or chew at a new bone. 
The cage seemed to him the best place for dealing with 
a bone without danger of interruption. 

Thus the cage soon lost all prison significance, because 
from the first Mickey refused to consider it merely as 
a place of confinement. This was characteristic of 
Mickey, a disarming trait that made it difficult to punish 
him; all the world was a pleasant place and full of friends, 
from whom he expected nothing but good. So, much of 
the time these early months of his puppyhood he was left 
free to sit on the stoop, his favorite post of vantage, where 
his black coat becoming daily silkier and longer glinted 
in the sunshine, betraying, when he stood up, a thin edge- 
ing of white down his breast like an old-fashioned ruffled 
shirt. Underneath the long black hair there was still 
much brownish puppy fur except on paws, muzzle, and 
head. . . . 

“The little black bear with the fox nose!” 

p v 

Mickey and Jerry soon became warm friends. Mickey 
learned after a while to let Jerry’s dinner pail alone, also 


36 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


his hat and coat, and after the first hilarious greeting in 
the morning not to disturb his work. He liked to lie 
near by and watch his operations, for Jerry like Katie 
did him the honor to talk to him as if he were an intelligent 
being. Mickey paid close attention to Jerry’s remarks, 
his head upturned like a small lion, listening gravely, 
considering, occasionally emitting a squeal or shaking 
his plume by way of reply. Jerry, as well as Katie, had 
a high opinion of his intelligence, and companionability. 

“Say, you don’t want to let me have that pup?” Jerry 
asked the Boss one day. It was the first thing about the 
place that Jerry, who was very poor and had a new child 
to feed each year, had ever coveted enough to ask for. 

“Ask Katie,” the Boss evaded. “Mickey belongs to 
her.” 

Katie, always compassionate and especially sorry for 
Jerry, to whom on hot days she carried cold drinks and 
on frosty autumn days warm tea, merely smiled at the 
request. “There’s no price big enough for Mickey!” 
she said with conviction. Mickey watched this interview 
knowingly. He knew well enough that it concerned him 
in some way. One pleasant thing about dogs, the Boss 
observed, was that no amount of attention or flattery 
turned their heads, destroyed the charm of their sim¬ 
plicity and lack of self-consciousness. Mickey was so 
much absorbed in everything outside himself that he had 
no time to give to an inner consciousness, if he had one! 
It was only when he was patently in disgrace that it 
seemed to trouble him. Then he showed by unmistakable 


37 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


signs, falling ears and drooping tail and wistful eyes, 
that he wished he were not a dog and might be utterly 
forgotten. . . . 

He acquired warm friends so rapidly that he was offered 
a new home almost every week. There was the Daughter- 
of-the-House-Next-Door with her own highbred darling, 
who threatened to steal him. She was young and pretty, 
played with him and mauled his silky coat and let him 
lick her white neck. He liked the golf-stockinged Man- 
Next-Door who didn’t mind how much he jumped up 
on his neat clothes and knew how to roughhouse a pup. 
In fact, Mickey was ready to like everybody he saw, 
to start wagging his plume and jump up, trying to reach 
a hand. All little dogs have this uncomfortable habit, 
because they are so far away from the giants of the earth. 
Mickey would have liked to walk on his hind paws which 
would have brought him some inches nearer to the lofty 
beings who dominated the world. Often his paws were 
muddy, and sometimes women did not like his leaping 
into their laps when they sat down. The Boss failed to 
restrain such excessive demonstrations of friendliness. He 
knew that age would subdue all too quickly this exuberant 
faith in the affectionate friendliness of people; that with 
growing experience, Mickey would become indifferent 
to all but a few tried friends. Meanwhile that bubbling 
joy in people, the desire to win their attention, to make 
friends, was too pleasant, to him at least, to dampen. 
Already Mickey was learning and graded subtly his 
greetings. The Son-of-the-House, who was critical of 


38 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


the small dog, received no lickings and few demonstra¬ 
tions on his arrival, while the Big-Man-Who-Walks after 
his first visit was made almost as much of as the Boss. 

“Mickey knows his friends,” Katie commented. 

Mickey soon discovered the short cut to the garage 
past the vegetable garden and could be seen from the 
veranda rolling down the grass path, much distracted 
by all he found on the way. He was not encouraged to 
rove in this direction because of the danger from motors 
entering the place. While he still wore his puppy fur 
beneath his silky hair and rolled as he walked he nosed 
his way through the hedge of tall ferns and hemlocks 
that separated his home from that of the Neighbor-on- 
the-Left. There were many enticements over the hedge 
about the big house on the hill which he could see from 
his cage: an almost constant yapping and whining from 
the two housed dogs that roamed the big screened porches 
and barked defiance whenever he raised his own voice, 
also the Lady and her Daughter sporadically working in 
the garden between the veranda and the hedge. Occa¬ 
sionally Mickey would poke his black nose through the 
hedge and cautiously advance toward the lady on her 
knees, who gave him a friendly pat and counselled him 
to go home, which he did after a time. He had no dog 
acquaintances, nothing but the dimming memories of 
his mother and brother and sister; it was only natural 
that his curiosity should be stimulated by the dog sounds 
from the other side of the hedge. 


39 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


So one day observing the Boss disappear through the 
hedge by the concealed path, Mickey followed him at a 
discreet distance, and when the Boss vanished behind the 
front door of the big house he, too, clambered up the 
flight of steps and advanced with wagging tail, to follow 
where the Boss had gone. Something unexpected hap¬ 
pened. Through the door left ajar inadvertently by the 
Boss burst a fiery little lump of fury, the Pedigreed Pet, 
not so much larger than Mickey but twice his age. 
Snarling and baring his full-fanged teeth, the terrier 
made for the intruder and cornered him beside the door. 
What might have happened then nobody knows because 
the Young Mistress opportunely appeared and grabbing 
her pet withdrew, while Mickey escaped to a shelter be¬ 
neath a pingpong table from which refuge the Boss 
fished him out, squealing and shivering in terror. His 
excuse for an attack of nerves might well be that the on¬ 
slaught was wholly unexpected, his first experience with 
hostility of any kind. It was a shock to his confidence 
in the universe. As for the attacking terrier, although his 
mistress might plead in his defense that he was on his 
own ground, nevertheless the truth remained that he had 
attacked a small puppy—a thing simply “not done 
among thoroughbreds.” 

While the discussion was under way as to dog man¬ 
ners and ethics, Capable Katie, who had caught the 
sounds of the fracas from her kitchen, appeared and 
grabbed her charge in her bare arms. For a few days 
there was a slight coolness between the two houses, but 


40 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


in well-bred human fashion no reference was made to 
the encounter. Katie warned Mickey frequently not to 
wander through the hedge, and he had no inclination to 
do so. Whenever he and Katie saw the Pets on their 
leads crossing the grounds, Katie picked up her black 
puppy and held him tightly to her, while the terriers 
growled and strained at their leads. Katie presented 
an amusing picture with her short legs firmly planted on 
the ground, her black hair standing on end around her 
glasses, Mickey wrapped in her arms contentedly survey¬ 
ing the scene. Mickey, safe from harm, even tried an 
infantile growl of his own. . . . 

One afternoon both the Boss and Katie being away 
from the place Mickey had been placed in his cage with 
a favorite bone, an old hat, and several other toys, and 
was told by Katie to “mind the house.” When the Boss 
got out of his car several hours later he heard from the 
entrance a furious shrill barking and hurried to the rear. 
Coming suddenly around the corner of the house he 
saw Mickey standing at bay in one corner of the cage, 
grasping the wire with his front paws, growling with 
all his puppy might at the intruder. When he recog¬ 
nized the Boss his expression changed swiftly from cour¬ 
ageous fear to relief, and as he was lifted from the pen 
he licked effusively the hands of the Boss. The exhibi¬ 
tion of fear mingled with desperation and courage puzzled 
the Boss. Mickey had never before behaved so. 

Some time afterwards the Boss met a friend who lived 
at a distance from his home. The friend said,- 


41 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


“We called at your place the other afternoon on our 
way through the town, and found no one at home except 
the dog. That pup of yours is some watch dog. We 
tried to make friends with him, but nothing doing! He 
just growled and barked and told us to get out. Does 
he always act like that?” 

Mickey had never seen these people before that after¬ 
noon; he had taken Annie’s injunction to “mind the 
house” literally. . . . “Good dog!” Katie said when 

she was told of the incident. She lifted him up and 
draped him around her neck like a fox skin, which 
Mickey liked. He flattened his ears as he did when¬ 
ever he heard himself praised, with a becoming air of 
conscious merit. The Boss rubbed his little nose and 
pondered the trifling incident, a smile on his face. Mickey 
had been afraid, of course, was still afraid after his en¬ 
counter with the stranger and thought the master might 
be another marauder. Yet he could bark and growl and 
stand up to the intruder. Mickey had the only courage 
worth while, the courage to stand up when there was 
fear in his heart tempting him to lie down or run away! 


42 


Chapter III 
HABITS 


M ICKEY soon became a bundle of little habits, his 
life organizing itself according to pattern from 
the first day spent in his new home. He had at once 
established the habit of sleeping on Katie’s bed and of 
breakfasting with the Boss (where such good things as 
bits of bacon and toast and honey were to be had if one 
were patient and well mannered). 

It was easy to help him to establish habits of personal 
neatness, so firmly that when later he was taken on 
motor journeys it was often a problem to find in some 
strange city just the withdrawing place that would con¬ 
form to Mickey’s habits of the toilet. He required re¬ 
tirement, bushes and grass; no pavement or alley would 
answer. . . . When Katie rose he was let out for 

his morning run. He liked to bark as most young 
things do when released from captivity. But at such 
an early hour barking might disturb neighbors who slept 
late, so that this habit of joyously greeting the morning 
had to be changed. It took considerable admonition, 
with many lapses, before he learned not to emit a series 
of sharp ejaculations. As soon as he came back to the 
rear door, Katie opened the way through the pantry 


43 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


to the front of the house. Mickey at once ran to the 
stairs and waited there, his ears sharply expectant. He 
never started up the stairs until he heard the call from 
above, “Come on up Mick!” Then, after the first day 
when he had to have the assistance of Katie in managing 
all of his four paws on the narrow and steep steps, he 
came bounding upstairs into the Boss’s bedroom, pushing 
the door open when it was ajar. At first he had to be 
helped to the bed, but soon found how to make the leap 
by standing back a little way and springing sideways 
to avoid hitting the bed-table. Long after he had ac¬ 
quired ability in leaping he took every bed in the same 
manner, never trying from a different angle or from the 
bottom, never missing, never ungraceful. Each new leap 
had to be carefully considered, studied, and accomplished 
with the same ease and grace. 

Once on the bed Mickey made a dash for the Boss, 
to lick his face with rapid darts of his little red tongue, 
and chew his wrapper, the old green one whose right 
cuff he was gradually severing from the sleeve, chewing 
it bit by bit each morning. This was his time for free 
frolic until Katie appeared with the breakfast tray, which 
always contained matter of superior interest. The habit 
was easily established that Mickey should not touch 
anything on the tray until it was offered to him by the 
Boss. Seating himself close to the Boss’s right arm he 
watched intently the disposal of each mouthful, waiting 
his turn. If morsels were not proffered with sufficient 
frequency, Mickey would gently, gravely remind the Boss 


44 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


of his presence by tapping his shoulder with a paw. He 
used his paws in a variety of useful ways not unlike a cat, 
licking them and cleaning his coat if a drop of honey 
fell on it. He also had a thrifty habit of licking up all 
the crumbs and cleaning the dishes, following their intri¬ 
cate curves and recesses with his mobile little tongue until 
the crockery shone. When the Boss reached for his 
cigarette box and matches Mickey prepared to leave. He 
did not like any form of tobacco. At the scratch of the 
match he would jump neatly across the man’s extended legs 
in order to descend where he had mounted. A moment’s 
pause to measure the distance, to examine the floor and 
see if it offered a clear landing, then he leaped and 
whisked out of the room: his feet could be heard hitting 
in pairs rhythmically along the stairs from step to step. 
At first it seemed to the man a somewhat gross and 
abrupt way of leaving as soon as the food was gone. 
But he came to appreciate the frankness and simplicity 
of good dog manners: that was that, Mickey seemed to 
indicate, and now it was time for the serious part of 
breakfast with Katie in the kitchen, and then the freedom 
of glorious outdoors. 

There were of course many other habits, and new ones 
forming all the time: the habit of secreting himself under 
one special piece of furniture in each room when he found 
no one responsive to his invitations to play. He could 
not be induced to lie anywhere else in that room. He 
liked to secure himself from disturbance by getting under 


45 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


something. In the living room it was the big lounge 
where he would lie with half-open eyes cognizant of what¬ 
ever went on in the room, ready to emerge whenever 
something like play or outdoors was in prospect. He 
considered that he was not obliged to come out of his 
lair when called. Later he had the habit of lying under 
the Boss’s work-table in order to be ready for any move 
that might mean an excursion. . . . There was the 

habit—a congeries of little habits—of the motor car, 
which did not develop until the coupe with a shelf behind 
the seat conveniently placed for him to sit and look over 
the driver’s shoulder came to the garage. When Katie 
first drove him about in the little Ford roadster, Mickey 
did not find it comfortable and did not acquire car habits. 

Most characteristic of his habit reactions was his re¬ 
sponse to Katie’s occasional absence from the house with¬ 
out taking him with her. Invariably she departed once 
a week for early mass, leaving Mickey with the Boss 
and the breakfast tray, contented and agreeably occupied. 
But he was not beguiled by this trick! He might be sa¬ 
voring a bit of juicy bacon, expressing a gourmand’s en¬ 
joyment with eyes and lips, when hearing the car at the 
entrance, where careful Katie always sounded the horn, 
Mickey would sit up on the bed, still and rigid, intently 
listening, ears cocked forward, rotating his small head to 
catch the direction as the car gained speed on the hill. 
Finally convinced that the car, hence Katie, was leaving, 
he leaped from the bed, ignoring any invitation to take 
food and ran to the low window, which by standing on 
46 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


his hind legs he could see through. But it was not neces¬ 
sary for him to verify the fact with his eyes: he knew 
already that she had gone. When the last sound of the 
car faded away over the hill he might run down stairs, 
whimpering to himself as he went, to examine the kitchen 
for confirmation. He might return after a futile search, 
very slowly, jump up on the bed and look to the Boss 
for sympathy in his loss. His ears turned backwards, 
in sign of distress, he would put his nose close to the 
face of the other human being whom he trusted wholly 
and question him mutely. It was quite useless to assure 
him that Katie would be back safe and sound within 
the hour—she had gone every other Sunday and always 
returned—or to try to coax him to resume his breakfast 
and distract himself. He turned an indifferent muzzle 
from bacon and toast and honey, his mind wholly ab¬ 
sorbed in something far more important to him than 
food—the possible loss of his one great friend. He 
might stay for a while at the bottom of the bed, listening 
to the Boss’s condolences and philosophic remarks on the 
transitoriness of happiness and the mutability of human 
as well as dog fate. With a look on his sensitive face that 
said in so many words, “What does that stuff mean to 
me? I feel—I suffer !” He would lie for a time very 
still in the peculiar attitude of dog patience, plume relaxed 
hanging limply over the side of the bed, his fine thin nose 
extended between his paws, his brown eyes clouded, his 
whole being in suspense, enduring. No petting, no invi¬ 
tation to play, no flaunting of the old green wrapper or 
47 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


the red Venezuelan sandal—his favorite toy—would 
rouse him from this somber mood. 

Thus Mickey first betrayed to the Boss what may well 
be the abiding sadness of a dog’s life, the sense of sudden, 
inexplicable losses, changes, removals, the unforseen op¬ 
erations of fate. As when Mickey lost his mother and 
brother, for always. Change, inexplicable, unreasonable 
change. To the one watching this small animal sympa¬ 
thetically the expression of this tragedy was quite clear, 
without exaggeration. Try as the man did, often, he 
could not convince his small friend that there was no 
occasion for such grief this time; his dog universe would 
presently be restored to him entire, as before. . . . 

When Mickey had endured his motionless misery as long 
as he could, and tested the futility of human comfort, 
he would come to a resolve; jumping down from the 
bed and without a backward look he would disappear, 
pat-patting down the stairs, unmistakably going some¬ 
where for what comfort he could find. Having once had 
sufficient curiosity to follow after him and discover where 
he hid himself on these occasions, the Boss discovered 
that he was lying on Katie’s bed, his head on her pillow, 
where he stayed no matter how urgently he was called, 
until he heard far away the wheels of the returning car. 
. . . Not once, not frequently, but each and every 
Sunday morning (and such “days of obligation” and 
other holy days as demanded observance) while Katie 
was saying her prayers and making her peace with God, 
the small animal in whose world she bulked enormously 


48 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


Was lying disconsolate on her bed, silently, stoically await¬ 
ing her return. . . . 

At the first sound of the car coming up the other side 
of the hill—and Mickey rarely made mistakes in the sound 
of his car out of the many that passed along the road— 
he would bound down to the door by which Katie usually 
entered, with a little moaning, whimpering cry used only 
on serious occasions, like this. If there was no one there 
to release him he would run to the front of the house 
seeking the Opener of Doors, the All-Powerful, and put¬ 
ting his paws agitatedly on his knees with ears stretched 
back level with his black ruff implored his intervention 
to put an end to his misery. He whimpered loudly, “Let 
me out! . . . Hurry, let me out—she’s coming!” 

Too eager to await the man’s slow footsteps he would 
rush to the nearest door and dance before it on tiptoes, 
bounding up and down, now barking his impatience. 
. . . Once free, he bounded off as fast as four short 

legs could carry him—and on occasions like this they could 
carry him with an incredible, twinkling swiftness—taking 
the short cut path to the garage, crossing the Picture Pat¬ 
tern Flower Bed in one leap. He disappeared from 
view between the thick pines that screened the garage 
from the house, but the Boss listening on the veranda 
could hear the arrival and picture the scene: Mickey 
with one bound would reach clear to his beloved’s breast 
and there be gathered in one delirious scrambling ecstatic 
hug. He was never pacified until he had licked her face 
(so Katie reported) and then calming down he was borne 
49 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


triumphantly back to the house, his face against the 
fox fur piece around Katie’s neck, whose pointed end 
so closely resembled his own black nose. 

This performance, parting and greeting, happened 
whenever Katie went off without taking him, which was 
very rarely. Mickey knew from sure signs when she 
contemplated departures, by a change of dress or activity, 
and he fidgeted around her until the magic phrase fell 
from her lips. “Want to go to ride? Does Bow-Wow 
want to ride in the car?” when, at once, he would run 
for the door, a quivering bundle of nerve, anticipation, 
desire, anxiety! The same demonstration on a smaller 
scale occurred when the Boss departed or arrived. Part¬ 
ings and greetings were always emotional scenes, displays 
of joy and fear, hope, disappointment, all of which the 
small round body with the help of the plumy tail and 
the fine brown eyes and wrinkling muzzle expressed. . . . 

“He’s a nervous pup,” the Son-of-the-House remarked 
indifferently after watching Mickey’s performance on 
Katie’s departure for Mass. 

“Yes, he’s very sensitive,” the Boss agreed. “He has 
vivid joys as well as bitter griefs, like all sensitive or¬ 
ganisms.” 

“It must be a nuisance—you are always considering 
him!” 

“I don’t mind the trouble he gives,” the Boss replied, 
realizing that the Son-of-the-House was contrasting the 
new favorite with the tough minded Scottie he had 
loved in his youth. (If Trotsky had ever felt separations 
50 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


he would not allow it to be known.) . . . “I get a 

subtle sort of pleasure out of Mickey’s emotional per¬ 
formances, although they are not extravagant where I 
am concerned. It gives me a curious deep delight to 
realize that anything animate can care so sincerely, so 
deeply, so lastingly! I should hate to have Mickey on 
my hands were Katie to leave the house for good: he 
wouldn’t eat or stir from her bed, not for days. He’s 
made that way.” 

“Oh, come—he’d be down for dinner all right!” 

“You don’t know Mick. No one knows a dog who 
is not with him all the time. Mickey has more emotional 
capacity than many dogs and vastly more than most 
human beings. He has less to distract him in his life 
from his emotions: his devotions have a free field.” 

“You sentimentalize!” the young man scoffed. 

“I try not to. I try not to read my own feelings into 
Mickey’s behavior. I merely observe, sympathetically, 
how he acts under various stimuli, and after many in¬ 
stances where he reacts in the same manner to a set of 
circumstances I conclude that he is moved by such and 
such emotions. He has, young as he is, a quite definite 
character of his own, likes and dislikes, sensations he 
craves and those he tries to avoid. ... I don’t 
pretend that I have gone far into the workings of his 
mind, but what I have found as far as I have gone is 
—I must admit—interesting, appealing. Mickey is a 
charming person, and I believe he will become more so 
the longer I live with him.” 


51 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


At this moment Mickey, who had been lying between 
father and son with his head between his paws, exer¬ 
cising patience with all the talk, got up, stretched him¬ 
self deliberately, first on the front paws, then on the 
rear, and coming to the Boss wagged his tail and put 
a paw on the man’s knees. 

"I know that he is telling me it is time to stop talking 
and take him on that walk I promised him some time 
ago!” 

He rose. Mickey, looking over his shoulder to see 
if the master was following, trotted to the veranda door 
and stood there waiting. 

“That is plain enough talk,” said the Boss, unlatching 
the door. “And so is his whimper when he hears Katie 
going off without him.” 

“You’ll make an awful nuisance of him,” the Son- 
of-the-House concluded severely. 

The Boss reflected a few moments before replaying, 
then,- 

“I think Mickey has been less trouble so far than 
anyone who has ever been an inmate of this house. I 
doubt if he will ever become what you call a nuisance. 
Of course he requires some care. . . . But he has 

contributed a great deal to the life of the house.” 

So, unrebuked and unchastised, Mickey continued his 
“demonstrations” over comings and goings, swiftly ex¬ 
pressing his gamut of joy and grief, all the more effective 
because it was so largely mute. . . . He could laugh 

when he was at play, wrinkling his little black face and 
52 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


exposing a perfect set of tiny teeth all around the red 
gums. He could cry, at least moan without dropping 
tears. He could be as gay as one of the butterflies he 
was fond of chasing and as serious as a full grown person 
when nothing could divert him. Above all he could 
show the affection he felt for those he loved in a multitude 
of simple convincing ways, from short, sharp barks, tail 
wavings and wrigglings, to lickings, in all of which he 
was as expert in delicate shades of enthusiasm as any 
lover. 


53 


Chapter IV 
PUNISHMENT 


O NE fine summer morning Katie appeared in the 
living room with a small black bundle in her 
arms—obviously Mickey in disgrace. 

“I can’t make him behave,” she complained exasper- 
atedly, setting the pup on the floor. 

Mickey realizing that he was in disfavor promptly 
crawled out of sight under the big lounge where he re¬ 
mained listening to the charges being made against him. 

“What was he doing this time?” the Boss inquired, 
annoyed at being interrupted. 

“He was worrying Jerry so he couldn’t eat his lunch in 
peace. When I called him he wouldn’t mind, but ran 
under the garage, and I had to crawl in there after him 
and pull him out. Naughty dog!” 

It was not the first time that Mickey had been guilty 
of disobedience even towards his beloved Katie. Lately 
—Mickey was now five months old—it had become plain 
that something would have to be done about the old 
question of discipline and obedience: love was clearly 
not enough to make an orderly peaceful household! The 
Boss roused himself sternly, recognizing that it was his 
part as head of the little household to administer correc- 


54 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


tion, exact obedience, inculcate respect, and so on. Katie 
having departed to her end of the house leaving the 
Master to deal with the culprit, the Boss called peremp¬ 
torily, “Mickey, come out here!” But Mickey not liking 
the new tone of voice stuck to his refuge. A second and 
a third call, each sterner, not having produced any effect 
the Boss got down on his knees and proceeded to exact 
obedience by force, which was difficult as Mickey with¬ 
drew just beyond reach. Having finally laid his hands 
on the culprit by the simple device of moving the lounge, 
the Boss grasped him roughly and holding the small 
furry bundle at arm’s length cuffed it sharply, saying 
with that sanctimonious fatuity with which the strong 
invariably accompany the administration of punishment 
to the weak, “Now the next time you are called you will 
mind!” 

At the third blow Mickey opened his mouth and cried. 
It was a peculiar sound, neither yelp nor whine, a piercing, 
shrill cry, one that he had never uttered before. The 
Boss let him fall to the floor, but instead of crawling off 
to his retreat Mickey lay in a heap at the man’s feet re¬ 
peating his cry which sounded more like a wail than any¬ 
thing else, his little brown eyes fixed on the angry human 
face, his tail drooping. 

“Stop it, Mickey!” the Boss ordered. But Mickey ap¬ 
parently could not stop it. He shook convulsively and 
kept up his cry, which seemed to come from a broken 
heart. Katie ran into the room and picked up the quiv¬ 
ering bundle, hugging it to her. 

55 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


“What’s the matter, Mickey darling!” . . . 

Mickey gulped and then resumed his wail. 

“What did you do to him? You must have hit him! 
You struck him!” 

She was crying, and the puppy was crying, less loudly. 
It was altogether disagreeable. 

“I merely cuffed him a few times—he isn’t hurt—he’s 
got to learn to mind!” the Boss explained defensively. 

“You shouldn’t have struck him with your hand— 
you shouldn’t! . . . You would hit a child!” Katie 
blazed, sobbing, her voice breaking like Mickey’s. . . . 

“That is a terrible thing to do, terrible!” 

Mickey stopped his wail and was licking Katie’s face 
as if to console her. “What did you bring him to me 
for then?” Katie bore him away in her arms, repeating 
between sobs, “You should never strike a defenseless 
creature, a little weak innocent like him! It’s wicked 
. . . cruel!” 

The Boss was left to his own unpleasant meditations. 
Katie had what the moderns call a complex about physical 
violence, as he knew. But why had she brought the 
pup to him for discipline? Mickey’s wail mingled with 
the sobs of the usually controlled Katie sounded in his 
ears still, especially that peculiar shrill cry of the pup, 
and he saw the injured look in the small brown eyes 
as if his most trusted had betrayed him. . . . 

Altogether the disciplinary incident left a disagreeable 
memory that endured. 

It convinced him that this form of punishment, into 


56 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


which he had been led by his own irritation, was futile. 
It just did not work for Mickey any more than it would 
for Katie! His sensitiveness and that gay confidence 
which made so much of Mickey’s charm for him could 
not endure blows no matter how lightly administered by 
the hand of the master. Never again would he strike 
Mickey. 

Nevertheless, some way must be found, it became in¬ 
creasingly clear, to induce Mickey to obey. A spoiled 
dog can become as much of a nuisance as a spoiled 
child. At least he must come when he was called. 
Usually Mickey was quick to run to the Boss or Katie 
at call because he expected from them something inter¬ 
esting and agreeable. But if his attention happened to 
be engaged elsewhere—and the older he grew the more 
he was distracted by every provocation—he merely paid 
no attention to the summons. He came when he felt 
like it or sometimes not at all. He loved soft summer 
nights. When put outdoors before bedtime he would 
disappear into the darkness, softly padding over the grass, 
and no amount of calling or whistling would get a re¬ 
sponse until he was ready to come in, and then he would 
reappear suddenly, wagging his tail ingratiatingly. He 
might all the time be sitting on the long terrace, listening 
to the birds twittering good-nights or to the cheep-cheep 
of a belated squirrel or the rustle of leaves flitting before 
the night wind. The dark delighted him: it was so easy 
to escape detection in it, to stay hidden close to the per- 


57 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


emptory voice of authority without being discovered. 
(Slyness was a definite characteristic of his puppy na¬ 
ture!) . . . When at last he was found, because of 

his shining eyes, or because tired of the game he gave 
himself up, scolding made little impression: he listened 
to what was said with twitching ears, tail slightly moving, 
ready to leap and lap one’s hand. He was rather indul¬ 
gent with such rebukes. . . . 

Clearly some more effective method must be found to 
reach either mind or heart, or whatever governs a small 
dog’s conduct! Katie suggested tying a little bell to his 
neck so that she might more readily find him when he hid, 
but the Boss thought the pup would take this as another 
invitation for play, and in a scamper of hide-and-seek in 
the dark Mickey would easily come out victor. Con¬ 
sidering the problem, the Boss realized with a sense of 
irony that it did not differ in kind from the one he had 
had to deal with much of his life, how most efficiently 
to induce the young to do something promptly, auto¬ 
matically which did not appeal to their fancy of the 
moment. . . . Some dog authority had written a 

book about a method he had applied successfully, which 
might be worth trying. So one pleasant afternoon the 
Boss appeared with a long piece of old rope, a light 
switch in one hand, a pocket filled with sweet biscuit, and 
calling the pup to him he tied one end of the line to 
his diminutive collar. Mickey thought it was a new kind 
of game and responded with gusto, trying first to bite 
through the rope, then to capture the switch. After awhile 


58 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


getting tired of this dull game he bolted for the bushes. 
When called he paid no attention and was astonished 
to find himself unceremoniously yanked back to the Boss’s 
camp stool, resisting with all his might. There he received 
a light cut with the switch and was told to come the next 
time when called. After a half dozen repetitions Mickey 
decided that it was a very dull game, but he had better 
comply with the rules. He received a pat and a bit of 
biscuit when he came in promptly instead of a scolding 
and a cut with the switch when he didn’t mind the call. 
The Boss was pleased with the result of his experiment 
and boasted of it, as pedagogues will boast, as if he had 
discovered the one right solution to the troublesome 
problem of obedience. 

“Quite simple,” he said to his Neighbor-on-the-Left, 
who happened in at the conclusion of the lesson. “See! 
He will come as soon as he is called,” and he untied the 
rope from Mickey’s collar. The pup, delighted to be 
released, made a dash down the path. 

“Mickey! Mickey!” the Boss called, and more sternly, 
“Come here!” 

Mickey stopped, looked around, and then judging that 
his chance of freedom would be poor in that direction 
was off on the double quick towards the garage. To the 
gentle irony of his neighbor’s laughter, the Boss hastened 
off after his pupil. But Mickey did not intend to fall 
into the trap and by this time having become familiar 
with the resources of the place in getaways, he led his 
master a chase which ended when the Boss returned alone 


59 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


to the house as the most dignified way of terminating 
the situation. Presently Mickey came trotting up the 
path as if nothing whatever had happened and to make 
his measure good voluntarily immured himself in his cage. 

Method number two from which so much had been 
expected had failed. All the same the Boss persisted 
in the experiment for several days longer. Mickey fell 
in with the game readily enough as long as the rope 
was attached to his collar and the sweet biscuits held out. 
But as soon as he was released for dress rehearsal he dis¬ 
appeared. He evidently felt that he owed himself a good 
time after his compliance about the game. Off he went 
for a ramble into forbidden territories, up the service road 
next door, and thence out to the highway where motors 
dashed by dangerously. Once he was picked up at the 
bottom of the hill by the Lady Neighbor and brought 
back to the Boss with a malicious smile and a warning. 

“He doesn’t seem to mind very well,” she observed; “I 
am afraid he’ll be run over some day if you let him go 
on the loose much longer.” 

This was an old controversy between the houses, the 
free versus the immured life for dogs; a controversy that 
would never be settled. 

“He’ll learn,” said the Boss, somewhat less confident. 
That had been the third time the same day that Mickey 
had wandered into the forbidden highway. 

v v 

To establish a dead line (so simple for people with 
authority) and decree that it shall not be crossed was 


60 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


one thing, but how to get this simple idea into operation 
in the brain of a small, active dog was another. For the 
early weeks of his life the two-three acres of his home 
had sufficed for Mickey: there had been no temptation to 
explore beyond the low stone wall which separated the 
Estate from the highway, either through the arborvitae 
hedge or the garage entrance. There were always the 
dark recesses of the pine woods to be explored, and at 
first they were more enticing to the puppy mind than 
the bare road. But as Mickey developed, as his life 
became more involved with that of human beings, as 
he was taken in the motor car out the garage drive and 
up over the long hill, he became aware of the larger 
world beyond his home. Also dogs, big ones, too, 
dropped in for early morning calls on this small new 
neighbor, rubbed noses, wagged tails, stole the pup’s 
bones and biscuit, and whisked off up the road. So, 
more often Mickey was discovered out in the middle 
of the road, his black head raised inquiringly, rotating 
it slowly to catch the faint rumble of traffic on the bridge 
below. The road had definitely entered the widening 
sphere of Mickey’s interests. . . . 

The Boss, who noted this development with concern, 
carefully replaced him within the stone wall and lectured 
him lengthily. Mickey obediently trotted up the house 
path as though he understood and after this kind ex¬ 
planation by the Boss he would take pains not to err 
again in that way. But he forgot, more than once, many 
times in the same day. He was never seen going through 


61 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


the front walk and the gap in the wall: he was merely 
found on the road, sometimes quite a distance from 
home. He did not run out and bark at passing motor 
cars as most dogs do because he was too familiar with 
motors from his early youth to consider them worth 
attention, even to get out of their whirring course. Hav¬ 
ing been brought back, lectured and even gently switched 
Mickey took to less direct exits when he played truant,— 
the service road next door or the bushy corner by the 
little run where it would be impossible to see him in 
the thick green leaves. 

Switching had no effect; literally it made no impres¬ 
sion. No switch in the hands of the Boss or of Katie 
ever penetrated Mickey’s thick undercoat of fur. It did 
not hurt, and he did not greatly mind the ignominy. 
He just closed his eyes tight, and when it was over 
frisked and caressed the chastening hand, showing that 
he was above any ill feeling. But he had no intention 
of taking the switching as warning or punishment. Ob¬ 
viously, he did not associate its occurrence with his dis¬ 
obedience and therefore as a deterrent it was useless. 

“I don’t know how we can make him understand,” 
the Boss complained to Capable Katie. “He pays no 
attention to the rod. In fact he seems to repeat his 
offense just after he’s had a switching. The little devil!” 

“Never mind,” Katie replied sagely. “He’s only a 
puppy, yet, he’ll learn in time. . . . But I don’t 

think Mickey is one to be taught by whipping.” 

Another ancient saw was thus cast aside. Spare the 


62 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


rod and spoil the child, how many angry parents have 
taken refuge in the glib sophism! How many uncom¬ 
prehending creatures, children and animals, have suffered 
from its brutal application! 

“We must try to make him understand the danger,” 
the Boss reflected, “and that the danger is our reason 
for setting up the dead line. If we can’t make him see 
that, we must induce him to give up the pleasure of 
disobedience because he is fond of us and we—unrea¬ 
sonably enough to him—don’t want him out in the road. 
One of the ways can be made to work!” 

So patiently, persistently, Mickey was called back 
within the wall when discovered outside or fetched from 
a distance when he had strayed over the hill. In time 
he betrayed a clear consciousness of wrong-doing when¬ 
ever thus caught away from his own grounds—falling 
ears, drooping plume, and a rapid unassisted scurrying 
back within bounds. It took much patience and time to 
produce even imperfect results. He would give up his 
excursions for a few days and then suddenly, the im¬ 
pression of guilt having faded in the fast moving sen¬ 
sations of his active life he would stray. But the inter¬ 
vals between transgressions grew longer, the conscious¬ 
ness of guilt more evident. It was not until nearly a 
year later that the taboo of the road became definitely 
established in his consciousness, and then it resulted 
from other considerations which will be told in their place. 

Mickey was never what kennel people would call a 
“well-trained,” “obedient” animal. He could not be 


63 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


taught to “heel” or come invariably at the first command. 
The Boss did not make any great effort to perfect a me¬ 
chanical obedience. Mickey always reserved the privilege 
of private judgment as to immediate response. As he 
reached maturity and recognized the superior wisdom of 
his human companions he took orders in public places 
on what seemed matters of urgency with alacrity, but 
off in the woods or in the house he exercised discrimina¬ 
tion. If for instance he was idly and frivolously sum¬ 
moned while napping under the lounge or established 
beneath the Boss’s big bed he was as likely as not to 
ignore the command, until he felt like appearing. But 
on the road he “minded.” Discipline accomplished 
through the mind and the affections must always be less 
brilliant than that of the martinet method, but it is more 
enduring and to a civilized person more satisfactory; so 
the Boss reminded himself whenever Mickey was slow 
in answering a call or seemed to have forgotten some¬ 
thing already mastered. 

Meanwhile, during this slow process of education, 
there was the physical risk, which at the height of the 
summer season with a stream of motor cars driven by 
reckless boys and girls and indifferent “natives” was 
constant. 

“You will find your dog dead or injured one of these 
days,” the Neighbors-on-the-Left warned repeatedly. 

“Perhaps,” the Boss admitted sadly, “but I had rather 
that fate for Mickey than to keep him housed or on the 
leash all the time!” 


64 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


When the Boss looked down from his veranda and 
saw Mickey rolling on his back under the old apple 
tree with a leaf or a small piece of wood or a rubber 
ball between his paws, growling in his playful voice, or 
saw him suddenly jump up to begin a “marathon”— 
a mad rush from house to garage and up to the wood¬ 
shed and back to the house, and round again and again 
as if the spirit of some mad ancestor had seized him and 
he could never stop—he could not think of curtailing 
the dog’s liberties. These “marathons” (which on rainy 
days he would do in the house to the total confusion of 
the furniture) had an air of simple idiocy: they were an 
expression of abounding vitality, the pure ecstasy of living 
and joy of a lithe, healthy body. Mickey would snatch 
at a twig or old bone—in the house his old hat, as he 
rushed past it, and tossing it in the air let it lie where it 
fell until the next round of the marathon when he would 
stoop, recover it, toss and away again. Why at that 
special moment this impulse seized him it would be 
impossible to tell, any more than why a bird suddenly 
begins to sing or an old ditty comes to the lips of a worker 
in the Majorcan fields. Life ever bubbling through his 
expanding body overflowed into this spontaneous race. 

“Sure anybody would think he was a mad dog,” Katie 
remarked as Mickey began a fresh marathon. She mur¬ 
mured with soft endearment as she might of a favorite 
child—“One crazy dog!” 

“An expression of joy just in living seems crazy to the 


65 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


ordinary mortal,” the Boss reflected, “and those who have 
this sort of madness should be protected!” . . . 

Mickey rounding the home stretch of his last marathon 
stopped under the old apple tree, head and one paw raised, 
listening intently to the shrill yapping of the dogs next 
door caged within the screened porch. Probably they had 
been roused to this envious expression by hearing the 
joyous squeals of delight with which Mickey frequently 
punctuated his marathons. He stood there for several 
moments, alert, thoughtful, curious perhaps, asking him¬ 
self what it would be like to live like those little dogs, 
caged day and night, always gazing at the beautiful world 
so full of unexpected delights through a wire mesh. . . . 

The picture of the small dog, so fully alive, so happy 
in his freedom, confirmed the Boss in his decision to let 
Mickey run the risks of this freedom while his education 
was in process. Mickey lived dangerously, no doubt of 
that! with all those cars dashing past the house, and he 
was growing each day more daring, more curious, so 
that it was more difficult to keep a watchful eye on his 
doings and wanderings. No one could tell when the 
impulse might seize him to venture into the highway and 
down to the old bridge, past the country club, on to the 
village—a hidden danger at every corner. Or when he 
would listen to the beguiling suggestions of older dogs, 
who were coming more frequently to call, no doubt 
painting in seductive romance the joy of roaming at will; 
Mickey’s infirm and uncertain good resolutions might give 
way, with fatal results. Anybody who motored could 


66 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


visualize the disaster, the little black body lying lifeless 
in the gutter as the Boss had so often seen the victims of 
brutal drivers. . . . Yet with that possibility always 

in mind he would not accept the alternative and condemn 
this bundle of energy and joy to the existence of the terriers 
next door, day and night, summers and winters. 

It was the old, old question, the eternal problem of 
human life in fact, whether to accept the risks and penalties 
of freedom or to play safe. For his own selfish relief he 
had better shut Mickey up and let him out only at rare 
duty moments, at the end of a short leash. His Neighbor- 
on-the-Left had once said frankly, “I keep dogs for my 
pleasure, not theirs.” The Boss could derive no pleasure 
that way, even from a diminutive dumb animal. He was 
sure that, could the choice be put up to Mickey himself, 
whether he preferred his present free life outdoors with a 
minimum of restrictions and a possible violent death, to 
an assured old age (infirm maybe with skin and digestive 
ailments) Mickey would have unhesistatingly declared for 
the risks—as the Boss would himself! . . . 

“At least he has had,” the Boss summed up, “five full 
months, so far, of good puppy life, as good a five months 
as any young dog could possibly live, stuffed full of joys 
and experiences. I must always think of those five perfect 
months, and not of the possible accident.” 

As if to underline this sentiment, Mickey barked invit¬ 
ingly to him, waving in his mouth an old cloth cap that 
had been given to him to play with, prancing before his 


67 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


idle master, saying as plainly as need be, “It’s time to 
play with me—you aren’t doing anything special!” 

The Boss seizing hold of the old cap swung the pup 
around and around while the latter clung tight, his small 
white teeth gleaming under the wrinkled fangs, growling 
in a delighted gurgle all the while his “play-growl,” saucy, 
defiant, laughing, “No you can’t shake me off! See how 
I stick. . . . That’s how my grandfather Black Bear 

clung to his prey and now this—” the Boss having taken 
possession of the battered cap had flung it to a distant 
corner —“this is the way Grandmother Black Fox pounced 
on the mice!” And tossing the captured cap once or twice 
he came trotting back to the Boss, shaking his plume, 
waving the cap to and fro just beyond his reach, dodging 
when the Boss tried to seize it, ready for every emergency. 
. . . Yes! To live dangerously and fully, while one 

lived—that was best! 


68 


Chapter V 
NEW FRIENDS 


A FRIEND of the Neighbor-Next-Door, a lively, 
brisk little woman, an expert in dogs of whom she 
had many, came to the house to give judgment about 
Mickey. He was brought to the living room and at once 
greeted the stranger with his accustomed affability, wag¬ 
ging his plume violently and putting his paws on her 
knees. She patted him and rubbed his black head between 
the pointed ears expertly enough and said,— 

“He’s a cute pup! Of course he isn’t a Pom—much 
too big.” 

“What do you call him then?” the Boss inquired 
indifferently. The time had long passed when allusions 
to Mickey’s dubious ancestry made any impression. 
Mickey had so well demonstrated his individuality and 
charm that it did not trouble the Boss to have him called 
a mongrel. 

The expert turned Mickey around, examined his coat, 
watched him walk across the room, then exclaimed,— 
“Why, he’s a Lupeta! You know those little black 
dogs you see on every wine cart in North Italy? That’s 
what he is—a Lupeta!” 

And satisfied now that she had discovered a category 


69 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


in which to place the dog she resumed her patting of his 
soft head. 

“What’s a Lupeta?” 

“Italian Pom. . . . They’re a good deal larger 

than the regular Pom.” 

“So you are a Dago, Mick, instead of an Irishman! 
. . . It doesn’t make much difference to you—or to 

me, does it?—what your family name is or where it came 
from.” 

Mickey looked wonderingly from the dog expert to 
the Boss and back again, and concluded by licking the 
strange woman’s hand with his little red tongue in sign 
of amity. 

“He’s cunning, anyhow,” she remarked consolingly, 
“whatever he is. But all Poms are fearfully yappy— 
that’s the bother with them.” 

“We are trying to break him of the barking habit,” 
said his master. 

“You can’t—they will bark at everything!” the expert 
pronounced in the positive way of experts. 

“This one is no more yappy than a terrier,” the Boss 
defended with a glance at his neighbor. Just then the 
dogs in the next house raised their shrill chorus, which 
penetrated even into the still living room. The visitors 
laughed, and rose to leave. 

“Some one must be calling,” said the Neighbor-Lady 
in excuse. 

Mickey, as if to show his good manners, no matter 
what his family might have been, accompanied the two 
70 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


women to the front door and stood wagging his tail and 
watching them depart through the wire screen. 

“All the same, he’s a nice puppy!” the expert called 
back. 

“Now you have said it,” murmured the Boss, tossing 
his old hat to Mickey. . . . 

A Lupeta! The name brought back forgotten pictures 
of Italian scenes, vistas of long white dusty highroads, 
high-wheeled gaudily decorated carts with the driver 
asleep above the shafts and by his side a little white or 
black dog with a sharp nose. The expert might very well 
have hit upon the truth. . . . But how had Mickey’s 

Italian ancestor got to this remote part of the New World? 
How had his ancestors got to Italy from the shores of 
the Baltic? How did our own ancestors get from Asia 
Minor (or wherever the experts now locate the Garden of 
Eden) to Boston and Oklahoma City? How did the 
tale of the Forty Thieves, told first in Arabia, travel 
around the world, turning up in such strange places as 
among the Alaskan Indians and the negroes of the West 
Indies? . . . But how does any family group pre¬ 
serve its individuality in such a world of change! . . . 

The more the Boss mused the stronger became his con¬ 
viction that there was some sense in the dog woman’s 
judgment about Mickey. Once not so many years ago 
a friend who had lived much in Italy had brought home 
a black Lupeta to whom she was devoted—a small black 
bitch of Mickey’s shape, with a pointed nose, old and 
rather cross as the Boss remembered the dog. But she 


71 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


had been taken a long way from her Italian home and 
was condemned to live in Chicago! . . . 

“Come on Mick—let’s tell Katie you are a Lupeta!” 

Mickey, dropping his old hat with which he had 
expected to entice the Boss into a game of tag, trotted 
after the man into the kitchen. When the news had been 
explained to Katie, she patted her child indulgently. 

“So that’s what you are, Mick? A loo—how do you 
spell it?” 

The Boss spelled out the strange name and added, 
“Italian Pom.” 

“Eyetalian! Well, it’s no disgrace,” Katie commented, 
“as long as you are a good dog—but I’d rather you had 
stayed Irish!” 

“Nevertheless the Boss overheard her explaining to the 
next stranger who stopped on the street to admire Mickey, 
—“He’s a Loo-petter,” and to the puzzled, “What?” the 
information, “an Italian Pom, you know.” 

So that remained Mickey’s official breed. 


Late one afternoon there drew up beside the lilac hedge 
in front of the house a travel-stained car containing a fat 
man and a thin woman—and an unrevealed companion 
concealed in the rumble. Mickey was on hand as usual 
to welcome the visitors. He took to them with more than 
his accustomed cordiality, which implied a great deal of 
wriggling and tail waving and hopping up and down on 
his hind legs to get nearer their faces. Neither seemed 


72 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


to mind his effusive welcome. The Fat Man holding him 
aloft in his two hands called him “a cute little devil,” and 
the Thin Woman talked to him nearly as intelligently 
as his Katie, which showed that she understood dog 
nature. The car presently went down to the garage, but 
Mickey was not invited to go with it; instead he was 
hustled back into the kitchen. That procedure, combined 
possibly with a strange smell he had noticed on the pair, 
led him to suspect that the roadster contained more than 
had been delivered at the house. This suspicion was 
confirmed when he observed the Thin Woman shortly 
afterwards go towards the garage bearing something Katie 
had given her in her hands. When he tried to follow 
he was uncermoniously captured by the Boss and placed 
in his wire pen (from which he had not yet learned how 
to clamber out unassisted). 

The following days he was kept in his pen much more 
than usual; he could not attribute his seclusion to punish¬ 
ment for misbehavior, for he had been circumspect in his 
comings and goings and had not been discovered on the 
highway. Nor did the visitors seem to dislike him. 
Whenever he was brought into the house, generally at 
meal times, they played with him, patted him and gave 
him scraps of food. They were nice people, very under¬ 
standing of dogs, and appreciated all his good qualities. 

Just the same, whenever the Fat Man and the Thin 
Woman went to examine their car, which they did quite 
often, Mickey found himself immured in house or pen 
and not invited to go along. He determined to penetrate 


73 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


this garage mystery. So one morning when he was not 
observed he strayed casually up to the woodshed and 
then scuttled quickly to the garage where Jerry happened 
to be eating his luncheon in the shade of a great pine tree. 
The strange car was parked beneath the same pine with 
its top up, and on the shelf behind the seat, just like 
Mickey when he went in his car, was a long lithe grey- 
coated creature, nearly as big as he (without his coat of 
hair). It had been eating something out of a dish and 
was licking itself quite as Mickey did when he had spilled 
food on himself in his eagerness to gulp tasty food. 
Mickey had, perhaps, never seen a cat before in his life— 
the Boss not liking to have them on the place because of 
frightening the birds—so he did not hesitate to approach 
the stranger. Wagging his tail invitingly he ran to the 
car and jumped on the running board and putting his 
paws on the top of the door sniffed at the queer creature. 

Thereupon the long grey thing acted in an extra¬ 
ordinary manner. Slowly drawing itself upright it sprang 
in one short bound to the farthest reach of the car and 
crouched there gazing steadily, silently, out of two big 
green eyes at the invader of its privacy. More excited than 
ever by such behavior Mickey ran around to the other 
side of the roadster and tail still wagging in token of 
friendly intentions tried to get a closer view of the new¬ 
comer. But the creature drew itself up in a fine, almost 
pointed, arc and opening its mouth very wide emitted a 
long unmistakable hiss. Just what might have happened 
had Mickey pursued his advances will not be known, 


74 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


for at that critical moment the Boss entered the scene and 
grabbing him about the neck, an undignified way of 
handling that he was not accustomed to, set him on the 
ground. Then in a tone that did not permit evasion he 
was sternly ordered back to the house and handed over 
to Katie for safekeeping. 

Now Mickey had seen the mysterious creature, knew 
that it was kept near his garage and that it was fed, not 
milk but something that to Mickey’s sharp scent seemed 
indubitably meat at least twice daily. He was not invited 
to these al fresco meals (nor did he care for the food 
because he had plenty of his own specially prepared) but 
he was resolved to find out more about the queer visitor. 
The safest time was early in the morning when Katie 
let him out with injunctions not to bark and wake the 
neighbors. So early the next morning he set forth 
immediately to complete his investigation. Before he 
reached the garage, while he was still concealed in the 
pines, he saw the Thin Woman holding the grey animal 
in her arms, at that early hour when only Katie and 
possibly his friend Mary, the cook at the next house, were 
wont to be abroad. The Thin Woman talked to the 
strange creature very much as Katie talked to him, softly, 
sentimentally repeating again and again a queer ijame, 
“Nezh, Nezh”; also the well known words, “cunning, 
darling, dear,” which he knew as a kind of verbal candy 
bestowed for good behavior. He sat there slyly, listening 
until the Thin Woman replaced her pet in the car and 
went back to the house by way of the orchard and the 
75 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


rose terraces. Then was Mickey’s chance, and he bounded 
straight at it. ... A violent burst of exasperated 
barking presently drew the Boss to the thick woods where 
under a pine tree sat Mickey in exasperated annoyance, 
barking lustily at the shy stranger who peered down at 
him with her saucer-like green eyes, immobile, silent, 
secure. Mickey had found out what cats were—a scratch 
across his black muzzle showed that—and what they were 
good for—to chase. . . . 

“Why do dogs always annoy cats?” the Thin Woman 
asked with some asperity as she sat at breakfast shortly 
afterwards. 

(Mickey was on his hindquarters at her side begging 
in his best manner for the scrap of bacon she perversely 
refused to give him.) 

“Why do cats always spit at dogs and scratch their 
noses if they can?” retorted the Boss, who was not 
enamored of his third unexpected guest. 

“It’s their only defense against annoyance,” remarked 
the cat owner, “that and climbing a tree.” 

“What defense have the birds?” 

“The wide heavens!” 

“And when their nests are on the ground?” 

“Nezh never eats birds! He’s too gentle.” 

The Fat Man winked silently at the Boss, who stifled 
an unmannerly laugh in his napkin. 

“Bring your cat up to the house and introduce him 
properly to Mickey, and I will guarantee Mickey’s good 
behavior,” the Boss suggested. 


76 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


a I should not like to expose Nezh like that—he’s not 
used to rough treatment.” 

“If Nezh will stand still and not put up his back and 
spit or run up a tree Mick will make friends with him!” 

“Thanks—I’ve seen dogs making friends with cats 
before. . . .” 

Occasionally, after the departure of the visitors, Mickey 
came upon a cat crouching in the bushes or under a tree, 
and the Boss knowing what the cat was after permitted 
Mickey to run it off the place. Usually the cat would 
take refuge in some tree, as Nezh did, and look down 
on the little dog complacently, exasperatingly. Cats 
wouldn’t play in the open, he felt. 

p p 

Mickey was by nature very friendly, unduly demon¬ 
strative perhaps, especially at first, as if he were eager to 
try out each new face and take the stranger into the 
constantly widening circle of his human friends. But 
he made nice distinctions among the habitues of the house. 
For the Son-of-the-House, who only came at intervals 
and had an air of tolerant condescension for him he had 
a modified regard. Mickey was perhaps conscious of 
having begun wrong with the youth, who had taken him 
to ride when he was very young and had driven his little 
car so fast and so jerkily that Mickey became suddenly 
sick and soiled the young man’s clothes and came home 
haggard and in disgrace. 

There was the doctor friend of the Boss who called 
77 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


him “Towser,” not being able to remember his name from 
week to week, and patted him as he might a cat. The 
Doctor had a superiority complex about small dogs, he 
being himself heavy with a big stomach. He considered 
little dogs beneath a grown man’s dignity as companions. 
With all of Capable Katie’s friends and those who came 
to the house to see the Boss, by whom he was almost 
universally admired and petted, he had a large group 
of friends, which grew steadily each month. He liked 
them all in different ways, even those who called him 
“nice little black doggie,” while gingerly patting the tip 
of his raised head and trying diplomatically to avoid any 
closer contact. (So few human beings realized that the 
only way a small dog could reach them and bring them 
closer into focus, to smell and place them, was to clamber 
on their gigantic limbs to his full tip-toe!) 

Of all the people who came to stay in the house he liked 
most the Big-Man-Who-Laughed-and-Walked, from the 
very first. There was something in the jocose and yet never 
patronizing manner in which the Big-Man addressed him, 
“Hello, Small Dog,” which was immediately ingratiating. 
And his willingness to put aside his book and play when 
Mickey pranced up to him with his old cap in his mouth, 
was in his favor. Mickey soon jumped into his lap as 
freely as he did with the Boss while the Big-Man sat 
reading in the Boss’s arm chair. He even scratched on 
the guest room door—an unheard of thing—after he had 
hastily greeted the Boss in the morning and taken a 
mouthful from the breakfast tray. The Boss heard the 


78 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


door down the hall open and a hearty chuckling voice, 
“Good morning, Mickey. ... So you wanted to 
be sure I’d be down for breakfast?” and he could 
imagine the violent tail waggings, the delighted wiggles 
and caresses that the favored visitor was receiving. There 
was no doubt that the new guest had made a hit with 
Mickey. He expected things from this visitor. Which 
he got in good measure! 

The Boss being unable to take long excursions on foot, 
the round of the Estate twice a day being his limit, 
suggested to his more robust guest (who had an obvious 
increase of flesh to work off) that he might explore the 
surrounding country, which had its own modest beauty. 
As the Big-Man was unacquainted with the region and 
rather heedless of landmarks his host offered to set him 
down at a certain pair of bars on a back road that opened 
into a lovely wood path. He even sketched on a sheet 
of paper the roads and lanes, the crossings of town ways 
to be followed in order to reach Sea Point and return 
(what Italians appropriately call a giro) along the sea. 
Armed with this, the Boss thought, even the most unheed¬ 
ing wanderer could hardly lose his way. That same 
afternoon they set out in the car for the pair of bars, 
Mickey between them, and then the Boss thought of an 
additional “combination,” advantageous for both of them. 

“Would you like to take Mickey with you?” he sug¬ 
gested as they drew up in the lonely lane beside the 
old bars. 

“Sure, if he won’t get lost!” 


79 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


“He’s less likely to do that than you are,” the Boss 
rejoined, “in fact he might bring you home if you should 
succeed in missing your way after my careful directions, 
for Mickey, at least, can retrace his course from his point 
of departure!” 

So after encouragement from the Boss, Mickey set out 
with his new friend. He did not understand quite why 
the Boss stayed behind, but deciding finally that the 
adventure was promising disappeared along with the 
Big-Man in the gloom of the pines. The Boss thinking 
to surprise both took a devious maze of lanes and roads 
to a farm that he had plotted on his sketch as the first 
landmark of the route. He waited beside the farmer’s 
barn until he heard a cheery voice across a pasture calling 
to Mickey, and presently the two emerged. Mickey 
descrying the familiar green car raced to greet his master 
with his customary joyous excitement heightened by the 
rapture of his first long walk in strange woods. He 
wagged and wiggled and licked in his effort to express 
all the happiness of the reunion and the delight of his 
adventure with his new friend, until the Big-Man starting 
forth on the next leg of the plotted course whistled to his 
companion. Off Mickey shot bounding across big juni¬ 
per bushes in sudden leaps of haste and joy. Once the 
Big-Man was overtaken, however, and the Boss not there, 
he was troubled, hesitated, ran back towards the car. 
But the car had already started up the farmer’s lane, and 
the guest was calling him. He ran a little way to him in 
answer, then stopped, clearly puzzled by this divided 


80 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


allegiance. Finally after some good advice from the 
Big-Man, the car being out of sight by this time, Mickey 
committed himself for better or worse to his new friend. 

The Boss, amused by the behavior of his small dog, 
waylaid the pair again at the next landmark of the 
excursion on a deserted town road, near the solitary 
marshes of Brave Boat Harbor. Promptly per schedule 
the pair arrived, the dog considerably to the fore. This 
time Mickey was less concerned over the recovery of the 
car and the Boss than with what the walker would do, 
and ran back to conduct him straight to the rendezvous. 
When after a few moments the Big-Man set forth again, 
Mickey did not even look behind: he had learned the 
game and was eager to play it, relying on the Boss to 
turn up again. Thus the young are taught self-reliance 
(and indifference), his master reflected. 

Again the car set forth for another point carefully 
described on the sketch, a tumble-down solitary farmhouse 
near the sea. There the Boss waited and waited until 
the sun sank behind the tall hemlocks. He went as far 
as he could up the road from which the two wanderers 
should have appeared long before. He shouted, to be 
answered only by jeering crows from a field. The Big- 
Man after all had succeeded in losing his way and no 
one could say where or when they would emerge from 
the wild cut-over land, the meadows and swamps, of this 
lonely region. So the Boss went home alone and waited 
anxiously pacing the veranda until long after sunset. 
As dusk was changing to night the tall figure of his guest 


81 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


came across the lawn, followed closely by a black shade 
at his heels. Mickey made at once for the kitchen for 
a long drink and some petting. Meanwhile, the Big-Man 
with many gusty bursts of laughter described his wander¬ 
ings in circles through dry swamps and tall brush. 

“Mickey knew I was lost—I could tell it from his 
manner. He kept close to me and showed plainly that 
he had no confidence in me as a guide. He even tried 
to show me the way back over the way we had come. 
And when we finally came out on the town road he trotted 
off ahead to show me which way to turn. He’s a great 
little wood dog, and not much tired after all that scramble. 
But I am you bet!” 

v v 

After that Mickey went to walk with the Big-Man 
almost every pleasant afternoon. He would remain on 
the veranda steps after luncheon waiting for the walker 
to emerge clothed in the fanciful costume he donned for 
such occasions. The Boss offered him another map and 
a rope for Mickey when they reached the motor road, 
but the guest refused both. 

“Your maps only confuse me because I can’t recognize 
the landmarks, and Mickey obeys perfectly, probably 
better than he does when out with you or Katie because 
he is anxious not to lose me—he feels responsible!” 

So with a slight pang the Boss watched the two set 
forth on their daily effort to reach Sea Point, noting how 
Mickey took it quite as a matter of course that he and 
the Big-Man should go off on these adventures alone. 


82 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


When they returned, each time frustrated at some point 
and not having reached the objective, he listened amusedly 
to the minute accounts of their wanderings, identifying 
the places where they had gone astray. The simple 
country of the neighborhood from long familiarity lay 
like a map in his imagination; he could not see why it 
should present so many perplexities to another. Mickey, 
who did not know it any more than his companion and 
who presumably lacked the map-imagination, would never 
have lost himself! He was equipped with other faculties 
than man’s. . . . Finally one brilliant autumnal 

afternoon the two walkers turned up at the house earlier 
than usual having at last reached their goal—discovered 
Sea Point! 

“And what is more Mickey found a big heap of 
seaweed on the shore and went nearly crazy. He rolled 
and rolled in it—I had hard work to get him to leave 
it at all. He kept looking back as if it were calling him— 
like catnip to cats.” 

Mickey still gave off a strong odor of dead fish, 
decaying seaweed, and other pungent matter; so he was 
taken at once to the kitchen where Capable Katie pro¬ 
nounced that he was not fit to sleep on a decent bed and 
gave him what she had long threatened, his first tubbing. 
Mickey stood up dutifully in the laundry tub, wonder¬ 
fully diminished in size, his little body showing through 
wisps of wet hair quite skinny—and lately he had been 
accused of being too fat!—his saucy ears flat against his 
head, with the look of weary patience he assumed when 


83 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


Katie fussed over him, as though he wanted her to know 
it was only for her sake he endured such indignities. But 
when he had been partially dried in a big bath towel he 
rushed for the reed mat in the dining room and did a 
small marathon around the table, rubbing his damp neck 
on the rough mat, growling all the while in his fiercest 
“big dog” voice, freeing his mind about many things. 
After he had warmed himself by this exercise he lay 
down before the living room fire and gazed fixedly into 
the glowing coals with a new strange look on his small 
face, as if he were recalling all the sensations of the after¬ 
noon’s adventure, especially the discovery of the pungent 
seaweed on the beach, which had roused in his dog brain 
some dormant instinct known only to animals. He seemed 
to have aged months in a few hours. He had an old 
wise-dog look on his face, the first the Boss had ever seen 
there. Mickey would soon be eight months old, as old 
for a dog, as the Son-of-the-House; already with the 
disappearance of his puppy down he was beginning to 
put away puppyish things. . . . 

“Mick was fierce over that seaweed! I wonder why?” 
mused the Big-Man as he pulled at his pipe and rocked 
to and fro on his feet before the cheerful blaze. 

“Perhaps that was where his ancestors buried their 
prey to season it to their taste,” the Boss suggested, 
scratching the muzzle of the silent dog. There was so 
much in a dog’s life that a mere human being might never 
understand. 


84 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


The mystery of Sea Point having been revealed and 
the zest of that excursion exhausted, the two walkers were 
taken in the motor car some miles inland to the edge of 
a large wooded area crossed by miles of old roads. The 
Boss paid a call on a farmer friend in the neighborhood 
while the two robust ones departed into the forest. The 
weather, which was quite cool, invited to upcountry 
excursions where the color of the foliage had already 
turned to many shades of red and yellow. Mickey (who 
had not been consulted) entered into the scheme with 
all his accustomed enthusiasm. Jumping to his perch in 
the car he licked the Boss’s neck, and then that of the 
Big-Man, displaying his gratitude for being taken along. 
He was as well aware as either of them that something 
new was on foot, fresh territory was to be explored. As 
soon as the car stopped and the door opened he was the 
first to jump out and without waiting for directions started 
up an abandoned town road which at that point entered 
the woods. The Boss told his friend where the car would 
meet him, and the two walkers disappeared up the rough 
old road. 

Two hours later the Boss having gossiped and drunk 
cider with his farmer friend drove to the designated spot 
farther up the road. He waited for a long time and was 
considering how much longer he should wait before con¬ 
cluding that the two were lost, when Mickey came in 
view on the run, head down. When the door was swung 
open he bounded in and with his wiggling body expressed 
his pleasure at seeing the Boss again. This took some 


85 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


time as Mickey had much to tell, much emotional energy 
to let off. The Boss at last remarked, “That’s enough, 
Mick! Get up behind.” But instead of jumping to his 
perch Mickey hung out of the open window looking 
back up the reach of road he had bounded down. He 
was plainly watching for his companion, and as the 
Big-Man did not come in sight he glanced inquiringly 
at the Boss, his ears back, his eager little face saying,— 

“Where do you suppose he is? I left him only a little 
way back where the path was quite clear. . . . But 

you know what he is like. He could get lost in a back 
yard!” 

He jumped lightly to the floor and began to whimper 
to be let out. As soon as the car door was open Mickey 
jumped out and without looking around started back up 
the road. He was soon out of sight around a curve. 
Another long wait. At last the two appeared, Mickey 
trotting just ahead of his recovered companion. He saw 
him into the car, then jumped to his seat and lay down, 
content. 

“Mickey has no confidence in me,” the Big-Man 
panted. 

“Do you blame him?” 

“Can’t say I do,” the Big-Man laughed. “He showed 
me most of the turns in the woods or I shouldn’t have 
been back today.” 

Mickey placed his front paws on the Boss’s shoulders 
and rested his head on them, a position that enabled him 
to watch the road and at the same time whisper confiden- 


86 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


tially into the driver’s ears. The Boss stretched back and 
patted the black head on his shoulder. 

“At any rate, he won’t desert you.” 


Everything comes to an end sometime. If Mickey had 
had the human liking for making generalizations, that 
must have been his first one. The happy afternoon 
excursions, exploring new country, stopped when the 
Big-Man left for the city. One cold wet night the Boss 
and Mickey drove him to the station where he was to 
take the train. Mickey, as usual, crouched on his shelf 
where by twisting his head he could look before and 
behind. He was subdued as always when something 
unexpected was about to take place. Suddenly the car 
stopped and drew off the road; the two men sat without 
speaking while the rain beat steadily on the roof. The 
Boss taking a thin tube from an inner pocket shook out 
a white pellet, which he put under his tongue. Mickey 
had often seen him do the same thing when they had 
been on their rounds through the Estate, or had strolled 
far back into the pines; the Boss would sit down for a 
time and occasionally draw out the little glass tube from 
his pocket. Mickey at such times would come back to 
him and sit down at his feet. He did not know why 
the Boss stopped suddenly like that on a pleasant expe¬ 
dition, but he was aware that something was wrong with 
him and his place was at his side. 

Tonight in the car he moved closer on his shelf to the 

87 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


man and reaching out his little black muzzle licked his 
master’s neck softly, once, twice, then stopped and lay 
very still his head against the man’s shoulder. Presently 
the Boss raised his hand and scratched the dog’s head, 
which was his manner of reassuring him, and after a time 
the car started on its way again. Mickey understood, 
enough. . . . 

At the railroad station the two men left Mickey in 
charge of the car and stepped into the building. When 
they returned the Big-Man leaned over the door and said 
good-by to the companion of his walks. “Another time 
Mick!” he promised pleasantly, “more long walks!” 

Mickey waved his tail slowly in response and as the 
car drove away sat watching his friend on the platform 
through the rear window, realizing sadly no doubt that a 
change had come to his life; that it would not be just the 
same without the Big-Man. He was quiet all the way 
home through the dark, curled in a round ball on the seat 
next the Boss. But he was not asleep, as the Boss saw 
when he looked down. Mickey was considering things. 


88 


Chapter VI 
CHANGE 


M ICKEY was now seven months old, no longer 
the soft little round ball that rolled like a sailor 
when he walked. He had lengthened out to eighteen 
inches from the tip of his nose to his rump where the 
bushy tail curled upwards. He was fourteen inches high, 
and when he balanced himself after breakfast on the 
Boss’s scales they registered fourteen pounds. His puppy 
fur had almost disappeared with its glint of brown; in 
its place fine long silky hair had grown very thick and 
soft, jet black in color, so black that it glistened in the 
sun. His neck and breast were covered by an extra coat 
of fine hair, like a sweater or breastplate, with a thin white 
streak down the front, which was comfortable in the frosty 
weather now coming. These warm coverings had served 
his ancestors well living in the bitter winters along the 
Baltic Sea. Of all that Mickey was ignorant, and of the 
change before him to a place where his warm fur coat 
would be superfluous. 

Meanwhile he carried it lightly and frosty nights and 
mornings enjoyed lying out at his full length underneath 
the old apple tree, which had lost its fruit and almost 
all its leaves. He still preferred that spot to watch what- 


89 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


ever animals remained astir. Most of the birds that 
he had chased all summer had already begun their 
migration to distant southlands. 

He was very handsome, the Boss thought, lying with 
black head erect, black ears stretched forward, two little 
black paws extended in front of him, his plume of long 
silky hair trailing along the ground behind him. Katie 
kept him well combed and brushed. Each day he must 
have all the tangles into which his long coat would get 
itself unsnarled. He regarded the combing and brushing 
as a special game invented by Katie for evening amuse¬ 
ment. He liked being clean, and when by chance he 
got greasy food or sticky liquids on any part of his silky 
coat he licked them carefully away, using his paws like 
a cat to reach remote, corners. . . . Yes, there was 
no doubt of his being a handsome little dog. It did 
not need the attention of strangers, the flattering remarks 
he called forth on the street, to prove that. Fortunately 
he did not understand these comments or know that he 
was especially good to look at. He was not in the least 
interested in his own appearance—a complete extravert. 

The Boss recalled what his neighbors had said about 
the new puppy a few short months ago, warning him of 
the disappointments in store for him. 

“You can’t tell what he will become when he is grown. 
Any puppy, almost, is cunning, but a grown dog is an¬ 
other matter!” 

True, Mickey was no longer a pup. There was no 
question about it in his appearance. As he rose from 


90 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


the ground and strained forward, head erect, ready to 
spring, the muscles of his haunches stretched, one paw 
raised, thin yet strong and perfectly proportioned, Mickey, 
Village Dog, dubiously Lupeta (Italian Pom) had every 
mark of breed, whether known to the books or not. There 
was not in his whole small body a single defective detail 
from the lovely brown eyes, the stiff ears, the sensitive nose, 
to the bushy plume of a tail, from the silky hair curling 
about his rump to the streak of white shirt-front, from 
the dainty feet, strong and never clumsy, to the even 
white teeth, not a bad spot, not one. For his weight and 
height and length he was in perfect proportion, and he 
was alive from the end of his vibrating tail to the sharp 
tip of his black muzzle, a single quivering mass of energy. 
He had breed written all over him! If no known pedigree 
could be made to fit he might well start another dog 
family, the Boss reflected ironically, thinking of the 
Bedlingtons, and many other ungainly “breeds” acclaimed 
aristocratic, without a tenth of the beauty and the grace 
of his “mongrel.” ... So among men, how many 
of the Brahmins he remembered from his youth had a 
distinctive homeliness, which was all that their pure 
descent had bequeathed them. Race was an unknown 
quantity about which men babbled much nonsense in order 
to flatter their own pride. 


Mickey was . healthy and strong. Never a sick day, 
hardly a qualmish hour in his short life. Occasionally 


91 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


he overate and found his own simple remedy, a certain 
lush grass which grew beside the garden paths and which 
devoured in sufficient quantity gave him almost immediate 
relief. He had been allowed very little meat, which was 
contrary to the views of his neighbors’ “vet,” who recom¬ 
mended feeding the caged terriers on raw meat, to the 
ruin of their temper. Of vegetables, fruits, bread and 
milk he had his fill. His taste was ecletic; he liked to 
try whatever the Boss or Katie found good. As a puppy 
he was fond of blackberries, which he picked for himself 
off the low-hanging bushes, and pears which he held 
between his paws and gnawed with relish. The only 
article of food that he had refused from the first was 
soda biscuit, which showed good taste. . . . 

Freedom and constant activity had given him a strong 
body and endless energy. When he chased a bird that 
was flying low just out of reach he ran like a small grey¬ 
hound, taking broad soaring leaps over flower beds, 
gathering his feet under him and rising in a sudden spring, 
touching the ground with the tips of his fore paws only 
to rise again. It was a pretty performance. He was so 
light-footed that it was impossible to tell when he entered 
or left a room, an advantage he availed himself of with 
characteristic slyness. He was here under one’s feet and 
then he wasn’t to be seen, having vanished nobody knew 
where, into a hedge, behind a tree, under a bed. And 
he stood on his rear legs to satisfy his curiosity about 
things out of his reach. He would thus examine the 
articles on the Boss’s work table, nosing delicately among 
92 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


the papers, to discover just what was being done. Katie, 
who had a variety of nicknames to fit his different aspects, 
called him “Nosey” as often as anything because of his 
prying habits. He would watch whatever was going on 
with his observant brown eyes, to see if it would mean 
anything for him. 

“He isn’t just dog,” the Boss began to say of him, 
“he’s a bit of a person.” 

He had always been treated as a person from his first 
day in the house, considered, talked to, caressed and 
made to feel important. He was so rarely repulsed that 
he had perfect confidence in life and in people. . . . 

With all his intelligence Mickey had few “tricks.” The 
Boss did not care for the artificial cleverness of the trick 
dog, who does imperfectly what another kind of animal 
accomplishes naturally. Mickey sat up on his haunches 
and appealed for food—or pardon—very soon, because 
owing to his shape and his curling tail for prop it was 
a comfortable posture. Katie had induced him to give 
a feeble, self-conscious bark in answer to the demand, 
“Speak, Mickey, speak up now!” It was amusing to 
see him trying ineffectively to do consciously what he did 
lustily on his own prompting. He would gulp soundlessly, 
purse his lips like a child told to sing, and emit after a 
while a feeble little noise. And that was the limit of 
Mickey’s tricks. He would never fetch or carry anything 
except his own playthings when he wanted somebody to 
play with him. For a creature so alert and intelligent, 
so ingenious in getting his ends as Mickey was, he seemed 


93 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


perverse in his determination not to be useful. As if he 
knew his secure position in the household, relying on 
the affection every one showed him, on his charm, he had 
no idea of compromising his privileges by becoming 
useful. Thus he was an example of the complete aristo¬ 
crat, who pays for what he gets, if he pays at all, by his 
individual personal gift of himself, the society he con¬ 
tributes to others. There was never the least doubt of 
Mickey’s contributing much to the household—gaiety, 
amusement, affection, interest. 

Yes, Mickey was much more than mere dog; he was 
a small person, with his own life which he shared with 
human beings, while he took from their so different and 
so complicated life what he could. Yet he was always 
dog, and all dog! 

Katie who knew Mickey best and for whom Mickey 
had a quite special feeling, shown in the way he looked 
at her, always said of him,— 

“Mickey is a good dog, Boss, such a good dog!” 

By which, as the Boss knew, she meant many things. 
She meant that so far in his brief career Mickey had 
developed no bad traits, and what might have become 
bad habits were easily corrected; that he tried as a rule 
to do as he was bidden, to obey the few rules and regula¬ 
tions imposed by his human friends. “Right” to Mickey 
was quite simply what these friends wished him to do 
in any conflict that might arise with his own impulses, 
and “wrong” was quite plainly what these same friends, 


94 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


unaccountably to him, did not want him to do, as for 
instance run out on the highway. One must doubt if 
“right” and “wrong” mean anything more than that to 
the child—or to the average mature being; a whimsical 
distinction, which is usually safer to heed! Although he 
did not reason about the matter, Mickey’s evident wish 
to master the human code laid down for him was 
endearing. Arbitrary as many of the commands must 
seem to him he made increasing efforts to obey them, to 
conform. The struggle that often went on in his con¬ 
sciousness between what he obviously wanted to do and 
what he was well enough aware we expected him to do 
was comic—and pathetic. When the Boss was giving 
him those first lessons in obedience with the long rope, 
the switch, and the sweet biscuit little Mickey’s mind 
was as transparent as glass: a primary impulse to dash 
off heedless of command, hesitation, and consideration, 
and then—occasionally—the triumph of “discipline” when 
he came in slowly, oh, very slowly, with drooping ears, to 
received the proffered rewards of sweet biscuit and a pat, 
which obviously did not compensate for the fun of having 
his own way. But the struggle in such a case was weighted 
by reward and punishment (as our dreary moralists would 
like to weight all similar human struggles). 

The instances where both of these were lacking, even 
in memory, where the choice must be made solely on the 
basis of affection were the ones which most pleased the 
Boss, affording him his best insight into the working of 
a dog mind: when Mickey gave up an engagement 


95 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


with big dog friends or halted in full career after a 
squawking hen and came dutifully back at the sound of 
the warning voice, when he “heeled” past a dangerous 
crossroads, for no reason known to him, without threat 
or reward. Such instances of triumph of love over 
impulse became more frequent as the pup matured, 
although it was clear that Mickey would never be a “well 
trained” dog, jumping at the sound of command. He 
would always consider, take his time in obeying, never 
respond automatically in good military style. . . . 

That is what Katie meant when she said, justly, that 
“Mickey is a good dog”: he usually tried to do what 
we wanted him to do, for no other reason than his 
affection for us. The more firmly we became anchored 
in his heart, the more thoroughly obedient he would be. 
That was the simple clue to his nature. It required 
patience and time to deal with his impulses, much of 
both, as will be seen in the goals set for him later on. But 
it was evident that the one and only sure way of con¬ 
trolling Mickey, sly, impulsive, eager, would always be 
through his affection. 

There was another sense in which Mickey was “a good 
dog,” which Katie probably had also in the back of her 
mind. He had a gentle disposition, a kind nature. He 
thought well—too well—of all human beings. His dispo¬ 
sition—or character—was essentially gay and loving, 
something that cannot be developed or created out of 
hand: it indubitably exists or does not in all creatures, 
human or dumb. Mickey’s uncle, “Dickey,” who lived 
“96 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


not far down the road, resembled Mickey strikingly in 
almost every detail of size, form, color, in everything 
except his face. Dickey had an evil face, old and wicked. 
When this uncle first began coming to the estate to call 
on Mickey, the Boss observing the singular likeness of 
the two dogs feared that Mickey might develop into 
another vicious little black beast, snarling and biting, that 
his uncle both looked to be and had the reputation in 
the neighborhood of being. According to the knowing 
ones that was what might be expected from the “breed.” 
But as Mickey grew older, resembling his uncle even 
more strikingly except in face and did not display any 
of Dickey’s evil traits, the Boss was reassured. Looking 
into Mickey’s warm brown eyes, seeing the demonstrations 
with which he greeted his friends, knowing his gentle 
ways—when in play he buried his small sharp teeth in 
one’s arm it was only necessary to say “Mickey, that 
hurts!” for him to begin licking the place he had bitten— 
he knew that Mickey would never resemble his bad uncle 
in character. His was a different nature. And it was 
that sweet nature which Katie also meant when she 
pronounced Mickey to be “a good dog.” 

Mickey was a good dog! And he was loved for his 
virtues as well as for his charm and beauty, which is 
unusual. 

So at the end of his seventh month Mickey was both 
handsome and good and fast becoming mature. He still 
chased his tail hilariously until exhausted, did his mad 


97 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


marathons around and around the grounds; still played 
like a kitten lying on his back with leaves and sticks, any 
old thing; still teased his human friends to play with 
him, fetching a ball or his old hat (the second one, not 
yet quite formless). He would play, but if the Boss or 
Katie were too much occupied to join him he would trot 
off and play by himself. Play he must as much as eat, 
and roughhouse with growling gurgles of joy. . . . 

But there were indubitable evidences of coming ma¬ 
turity besides his fine new coat and his figure, a new 
swagger with the dogs who came in to call, mostly big 
ones (which perhaps flattered him)—a police dog, a red 
setter, a collie. Mickey began to reflect—to lie with his 
small pointed head between his thin paws, his eyes wide 
open, observing, cogitating, call it what you will, not 
sleeping nor romping. Already he had something of a 
past to consider. There had been notable changes both 
within and without during the past half year, changes 
in the season, in his little world: the Big-Man-Who- 
Walked had come and gone; the neighbors next door 
who had patted him with condescension whenever they 
passed through the place, had gone; and with them the 
two queer little yapping dogs, who had never once come 
down from their cage for a frolic, whose shrill barks and 
snarls had served as a kind of chorus for his own free 
activities—they also had gone. The big house on the 
other side of the hedge was empty—he had ascertained 
this by a special tour of investigation, when he ventured 
into the open porches and stretched himself to a window 


98 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


sill to look into the darkened rooms. Mary the cook, who 
loved him and petted him almost as much as Katie, had 
gone, and many of Katie’s other friends, whose acquaint¬ 
ance he had made on picnics and parties he saw no more. 
. . . At the beginning he had been picked up out of 
his mother’s pen and set down in his present home; there 
had been nothing but change ever since. No wonder 
that he could not let Katie go from his sight without mis¬ 
trust. This world Mickey must consider to be a scene of 
sudden and unaccountable changes. 


All this the Boss could divine that last Sunday morning 
before the departure for the winter, while Katie was at 
Mass, having left Mickey on the bed beside the break¬ 
fast tray, a cheerful fire blazing in the fireplace. Mickey’s 
face suddenly assumed an old look, the wrinkled ex¬ 
pression of experienced age, as dropping the sliver of 
bacon just bestowed on him he turned his small head to 
catch the last sound of the departing car. Then as usual 
he rushed to the window to look and listen, then again 
to the bed, but not to eat: indifferently he turned away 
from a whole slice of juicy bacon suspended before his 
nose as a distraction. His ears flattened back to the nape 
of his ruffed neck, he looked at the Boss with an intent, 
inquiring, miserable expression. He whimpered gently, 
plainly grumbling at the changing habit of life, and as 
that made no impression he lay still, his head between his 
paws in an attitude of endurance. The Boss patted his head 


99 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


softly, but the ears remained obstinately lowered—he was 
not to be cajoled that way. At last the Boss began to talk 
to him, as though he could understand (as Katie said he 
did) whatever was said to him. 

“You mustn’t upset yourself every time Katie leaves 
the house without you! She always comes back—you 
know she has every time!” 

“That’s all very well! How do I know she will this 
time? The Big-Man didn’t after we left him at the 
station that night,” Mickey seemed to retort, lifting his 
head with the backward ears and listening intently to 
some distant sound, then resuming his stoic posture— 
that was not his car. 

“You must get used to these changes,” the Boss con¬ 
tinued. “There are bigger ones ahead of you, old man.” 

Mickey listened with averted face to these well mean¬ 
ing but futile platitudes; suddenly he sprang erect and 
listened motionless to a sound imperceptible to the man. 
Then with one disdainful leap, he ran to the stairs, and 
went pat-patting down them as fast as he could whim¬ 
pering excitedly: he knew the car was coming back and 
he must be at the door to greet Katie. . . . Pres¬ 

ently he came back up the stairs and with a spring rushed 
at the Boss, tail waving, ears erect, happy once more. 
Katie had come home; he had greeted her and now every¬ 
thing was as it should be! He licked the Boss’ hand and 
began to play with his dressing gown, ready for anything. 

There was no curing Mickey of his worrying over 
Katie’s leaving him. Time did not lessen the anguish nor 


100 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


the ecstasy of reunion. Nor did the Boss want him to 
grow accustomed, stale, which would mean that he felt 
less deeply, had less of his gift of “caring” for those he 
loved, his most precious quality. A cleverer dog might 
have discovered before this that Katie always returned 
after a little while from these weekly absences and merely 
wagged a languid tail on seeing her. Mickey was not 
clever in that way: he was sensitive and loving, emotional. 
And that, the Boss reflected, was before everything else 
what he desired in a dog companion. 


A greater change than any that had yet befallen 
Mickey was impending, and although the nature of it 
could not be explained to him, the small dog sensed the 
fact readily enough. Observant of whatever went on 
in the house and about the place he knew that bags and 
boxes had been brought from their hiding places and 
were being packed. Unusual activities in the house 
routine. He assisted Katie in getting the car ready for 
a journey. 

Some of the preparation concerned him more nearly, 
such as a new leather harness with complicated straps 
and buckles that Katie tried on him and which he im¬ 
mediately showed her she did not know how to adjust 
securely. Also a small metal chain which he found he 
could not easily bite through as he had a similar leather 
one the Boss had presented him. All these things and 
more said to his dog intelligence as plainly as speech— 


101 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


“Another change coming!” What would it be like? How 
much would it affect him? He could not even make a 
guess: he must just accept, with a determination not to 
lose the two beings who had become a large part of his 
life, Katie and the Boss. . . . 

“Get out of my way, Nosey!” Katie admonished. 
“There, take your cat’s head and go play outside. . . . 
I’m busy!” 

But instead of worrying the rubber cat’s head, Mickey 
sat persistently on the kitchen stoop, peering through the 
screen at the unwonted activities inside the house. 


102 


Chapter VII 
THE JOURNEY 


I T WAS a cold, raw November day when Mickey 
started in the coupe with the Boss and Capable Katie 
on his long journey, which was to land him in such a 
different country, with so many strange things about it, 
so many new companions: an entirely new world. As 
the car drove away from the familiar lilac hedge, past 
which Mickey had so often dashed to welcome the re¬ 
turning household, a few flakes of snow were falling from 
the gray sky, and before they had gone many miles a 
cold rain set in, necessitating the closing of the windows, 
which prevented Mickey from resting his paws on the 
car doors and sticking his head out to enjoy the landscape 
as he usually did. . . . He had been excitedly frisk¬ 

ing about before the departure in anticipation of a trip 
in the car—in fact at the last moment had dashed back 
around the house on some errand as he liked to do, 
playing with the idea of going away and, like a child, 
waiting to be coaxed. His new harness had been put 
around him and fastened securely, thoughtful Katie had 
put some puppy biscuit on his ledge behind the seat, as 
well as a little blanket to make it softer, his new chain, 
his old hat, and a nice smooth bone with which he could 


103 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


while away the weary hours after the first excitements of 
travel had worn off. But these preparations were hardly 
more than what kind Katie made for any day’s excursion 
—he had had several of those and knew all about it. 

The first part of the journey was quite familiar, over 
the broad concrete road to the market town where he had 
been in the habit of accompanying Katie at least twice 
each week to buy supplies. After barking at the dog 
below the hill there was nothing to do except watch the 
gray blocks of concrete disappear behind the fast moving 
car. The Boss was driving as if he were in a hurry. 
They went through the little market town without stop¬ 
ping, which must have seemed queer to Mickey, past the 
dingy meat shop where his good bones came from— 
he knew that because Katie had introduced him to the 
fat butcher who had once handed him a bone cut from 
a huge carcass and all the help had patted and admired 
him. . . . On and on out of the town and down a 

long smooth road which he had never seen before. As 
there were no dogs on this road and no horses or other 
animals to get excited about—just motor cars whizzing 
past—Mickey settled himself for a nap, after giving Katie 
a little friendly lick on her neck with his tongue and trying 
to beguile the Boss into playing with him as he some¬ 
times did while he drove the car with one hand. But 
today the Boss was stern and preoccupied as if he were 
bent on an errand which did not permit either delay or 
fooling. . . . When Mickey woke from his nap and 

stood up to gaze out through the broad glass door at 


104 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


the flying landscape, they were entering a strange town 
—one of the great many Mickey was to pass through 
on this journey without a chance to get out. Spying a 
dirty white dog he growled insolently at him through 
the top of the door where the glass was let down a couple 
of inches for air. He liked to growl thus at dogs from 
his safe position in the moving car and could not under¬ 
stand why the Boss objected to it so strongly, telling him 
to shut up. He felt like a big dog when he looked down 
even on much larger dogs from the vantage of a good 
car and could indulge safely his feelings of superiority, 
which his small size did not permit when he was on 
a level with strange creatures. 

Having passed through this manufacturing town with 
its jam of motor cars and people on foot Mickey curled 
up again and closed both eyes. 

p p 

“Lucky he seems to want to sleep,” the Boss observed. 

The Boss had had a good many misgivings about 
this lofrg journey for Mickey. To ride day after day 
for ten days or a fortnight, six or more hours each day, 
with only brief intervals to jump out of the closed car 
and stretch one’s legs, required some endurance for a 
human being. For a small dog, still puppyish, who was 
ever active from daylight to dark, never staying in one 
place longer than a few moments at a time, to confine 
him on a narrow ledge (with a ridge in it which made 
repose difficult) the air stuffy from the heat of the engine 
105 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


and the bad habit human beings have of smoking, that 
semed to invite trouble, and the Boss had not looked for¬ 
ward with joy to this long trek at such close quarters 
with a small dog. 

But as often happened where Mickey was concerned, 
forebodings were futile because he reacted quite differ¬ 
ently from what might have been expected. Mickey went 
to sleep. It would be an exaggeration to say that he slept 
all the way to Florida, but he slept most of the way, or 
pretended to be asleep. As soon as the car settled into 
its rhythmic roll of fifty to sixty miles per hour and he 
realized that he was in for another day of motoring, 
Mickey curled up either on his ledge or between the two 
occupants placing his head on a convenient knee or 
curled up in Katie’s lap when she was not driving and 
slept. As soon as the car stopped or slowed down he 
was alertly awake, standing on his hind legs to get a 
better view of what might be going on; if the door win¬ 
dow was down, hanging out of the car (his tail tightly 
grasped by Katie) enjoying the fresh air. When every 
few hours the car drew up by the roadside and he was 
allowed to jump out, immediately he became a small 
frisky dog once more, running about with nose to the 
ground, chasing birds and having a good time until 
after five minutes the Boss sounded the horn and Katie 
said, “Mickey, come into the car!” Somewhat slowly he 
obeyed and reluctantly jumped to his perch, to fall into 
coma for another period of roll, roll, roll. . . . He 
was often so inert in the car that the Boss would have 


106 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 

worried over him, all the more as Mickey wisely made up 
his mind to eat but once a day on the journey, usually 
at night on arrival at a hotel. But whenever the car 
stopped long enough to let him shake his legs, Mickey 
came out of his coma and proved that he was as gay 
as ever. 

Dogs, the Boss discovered, have a most fortunate adap¬ 
tation to a world only intermittently interesting: they 
can sleep. Mickey automatically turned off his attention 
when there was nothing worth paying attention to, like 
miles on miles of American landscape, and became as if 
he were dead. He had observed the same economical 
habit at home. If anybody would play with him or if 
anything that interested him was going on in the house 
Mickey was on his tip-toes with excitement, but as soon 
as he judged there was nothing worth getting excited 
over he shut off consciousness. What an invaluable 
trick that would be, the Boss reflected, for human beings? 
So much talk it not worth their listening to, so many 
sounds are hideous, so many sights are ugly—all of which 
could be avoided if one but achieved the automatic cut¬ 
off habit dogs are gifted with. The journey in a small 
closed car with two people, who were often too tired 
to play with him, who would smoke and thereby make 
the atmosphere vile for his sensitive nose, with nothing 
that any alert dog could be supposed to have an interest 
in, this bored him unquestionably. He developed the 
yawning habit and could give prodigious gapes which 
permitted one to see all the way down his red tongue to 


107 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


the top of his gullet. But he never became peevish or 
ill-tempered, never asked, “Where are we going, mo-ther? 
Why don’t we stop, mo-ther? When will we get there, 
mo-ther? y> Not Mickey. One of his superhuman traits 
was that he never thought of revenging himself for dis¬ 
comfort, boredom, disappointments, on those nearest him. 
He never held them responsible for what wasn’t pleasant, 
or if he did he kept that feeling to himself. Consequently 
his temper was always serene; he was the best tempered 
one of the three all those sixteen hundred miles between 
Maine and Florida, all those fourteen days during which 
he had a new bed to sleep on each night, and a strange 
environment to get accustomed to. Katie’s remark, which 
became a refrain, was indubitably true: 

“Mickey’s such a good dog!” 

It was just as if he had taken the situation in, recog¬ 
nized its necessities, and had determined not to be upset 
by the rapidly, constantly changing world—and to get 
out of circumstances (which were anything but those he 
preferred) all there was in them for a dog. This trait of 
character, so rare among human beings, was especially 
prized by the Boss. Given a desert island or a narrow 
prison cell what would a person do—lie down and moan 
or explore its possibilities of expansion, get out of it every 
atom of freedom and interest it could possibly yield? 
Mickey without the bother of arguing himself into a 
favorable mood, instinctively, that is by nature, exer¬ 
cised his ingenuities in making the most of any unprom¬ 
ising situation. The Boss remembered what a celebrated 


108 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


French critic had once said to him of Rabelais, using 
Rabelais’ own words of Pantagruel, “II etait un tout bon 
petit Franqais [He was a bully little Frenchman], he 
took everything in good part.” 

Mickey took everything in good part and got fun 
in most unexpected ways. When the car drove into 
a gas station Mickey leaned out of the open window, 
and if he did not happen to like the looks of the attend¬ 
ant, Mickey would give a low disgusted growl, his 
phrase for “Go to hell!” He would emit this comment 
even when the Boss was trying to elicit road information 
from such a dullard, and when he was reproved, wagged 
his tail and showed his teeth as though to say, “But 
he was such a bum, Boss!” 

<9 9 

Another of the Boss’s misgivings proved to be un¬ 
founded, the trouble of inducing any decent hotel to 
permit Mickey to spend the night in Katie’s room. He 
had heard so many tales of, “We do not take dogs and 
children, sir,” which proved to be part of the American 
myth. The fact was that the more of a hotel it hap¬ 
pened to be, the more metropolitan and pretentious, the 
less objection was made to Mickey. The only real ob¬ 
jection encountered in the long journey was at one un¬ 
tidy—not to say squalid—inn in a little southern country 
town. The Boss, perhaps overhastily, concluded that the 
southerner’s liking and consideration for animals was like 
his feeling toward the negro and his respect for women, 
a sentimental illusion. 


109 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


Mickey with his harness on and tugging at his little 
chain walked boldly into the most elaborate hotels, learned 
to enter the elevator cage and not make up to fellow 
passengers, to preserve a dignified neutrality to the ad¬ 
vances made by elevator boys and bell boys and cham¬ 
bermaids, and to accustom himself to a new room and 
a new bed each night. He learned to stay by himself 
when his friends were engaged, to stay for hours alone 
in a strange room without barking or whining. Once 
when there was another dog somewhere near he had 
talked a bit, but he shut up when Katie explained to 
him what were good manners in a hotel. Left to him¬ 
self at dinner time he would curl up in a round ball and 
go to sleep—that invaluable capacity, which if it had 
not been balanced by an equal avidity for play might 
have been attributed to a growing idiocy. Mickey would 
sleep where an idle human would smoke or play cards 
or go to the movie or read magazines and newspapers. 
Which was the better off? . . . 

There was no trouble about Mickey’s food because, 
except for an occasional puppy biscuit or a raisin and 
piece of candy from the Boss’s pocket, Mickey had made 
up his mind to eat but one meal a day. Usually that 
was at night and Katie brought it to him in his own 
dish, and he ate it in her room on a newspaper. . . . 

Once he was rebuffed. It was in an ambitious southern 
city (with traffic lights) where the car had stopped for 
luncheon, and they entered the nearest restaurant kept as 
usual by a Greek. The waiter, who was also one of the 


110 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


proprietors, had looked dubiously on Mickey when he 
followed Katie in, but as Mickey, after being tied to a 
chair, crawled out of sight under the table, nothing was 
said. As she often did, Katie reserved some soup and 
vegetables in her soup plate and put it on the floor under 
the table for Mickey. The Greek seeing this desecration 
of decency rushed up in a fury and assailed his patrons 
with reproaches. “Who wants to eat out of that dish 
after a dog?” he demanded. 

“Why, don’t you wash your dishes?” the Boss asked. 

“Wash—of course—but nobody wants to eat after a 
dog anyway!” 

“Don’t you think a dog is as clean as that?” the Boss 
said holding up a dirty plate which had been put before 
him. The Greek grabbed the plate; the Boss added 
with lofty disdain, “Put the dog’s plate on the bill—I 
will pay for it!” 

Mickey, however, gave the more dignified rebuff, for 
he refused to touch the food, and when the bill was 
presented there was nothing said about a cover charge 
for his dish. 

Only once was Mickey excluded from a restaurant 
and that was from the roccoco (“Mediterranean style”) 
“coffee room” of a gingerbread hotel in northern Florida. 
“Sorry, folks,” the much bedaubed waitress remarked, 
“we don’t allow daogs.” And Mickey had to spend the 
lunch hour shut up in the car, which was not so bad as 
a mechanic, who was doing something to the generator, 
was sociably inclined. 


Ill 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


There was one great adventure in the trip, other than 
three days of bewildering hell, (from Mickey’s point of 
view) in New York City, where Katie left him for long 
hours with only her old wrapper for comfort; where 
strange children pawed him and people called him “nice 
doggie” and offered him indigestible things to eat; where 
for a few brief moments he renewed acquaintance with 
the yappy terriers in their magnificent city apartment 
and got a decided impression that theirs was no life for 
an enterprising dog. Once there was a thrill, and al¬ 
though Mickey never expressed himself about his vision 
of sudden death, he showed that he had been sensible of 
his narrow escape. 

They had spent a cold rainy night at the Natural 
Bridge. (Mickey had been taken in the evening to see 
the Bridge which was illuminated by a great many electric 
lights, but what had interested Mickey much more were 
the little animals moving around the bushes underneath 
the great stone arch; he tried his best to free himself of 
his chain so that he might really explore the place.) 
For another reason Mickey might remember the Natural 
Bridge. Katie finding hot water in her bathroom had 
given him a tubbing, which had been omitted the week 
before, and he did his best to pretend it was a real bath 
by going through all his stunts afterward, even to the 
marathon. In the morning there was also rain, but what 
was worse a glare of ice on the roads. The Boss although 
he had no chains for the car decided to go on, slowly, 
and for a time they crawled safely enough along the 


112 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


icy highway, Katie descending every few hundred yards 
to wipe the frozen slush from the wind shield so that 
the Boss could see to drive. All of which interested 
Mickey. Then the Boss lifted the windshield wide open, 
and Mickey enjoyed the cold rain and freezing wind on 
his thick coat; now the car went a little faster along the 
flat open highroad. Until suddenly without warning it 
began to whirl on its rear wheels and after describing two 
complete circles backed off the road down a steep em¬ 
bankment up against a barbed wire fence where it finally 
stopped without toppling on its side as Mickey thought 
it must and the Boss, too. 

All this while Mickey was sitting between Katie and 
the Boss. He kept very quiet. Even when the door was 
finally opened by the trembling Katie, Mickey did not 
at once jump out and begin to run about as he usually 
did. He stayed beside the car while Katie and the Boss 
discussed their near accident. When finally Katie ac¬ 
cepted the offer of a passing motorist and went off with 
him to look for help to haul the car out of the field where 
it had landed, Mickey stayed with the Boss and watched 
with much interest all the contrivances tried for extricating 
the car from the mud. When finally Katie came back, 
and the car was on the road and running, Mickey excitedly 
waved his tail and welcomed Katie and licked her as 
if he wanted to tell all about what he and the Boss had 
been doing. When they were again on their way (more 
cautiously!) Mickey sat behind the Boss, who was driving, 
his paws resting on his shoulders, and now and then he 


113 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


would stretch his head to the Boss’s ear and silently com¬ 
municate something to him—perhaps congratulations over 
their miraculous escape and perhaps cautions about his 
driving. 

Mick, as Katie remarked, had behaved very well 
throughout this trying experience—he had not lost his 
head. 

Cold, cold, cold all the way down through the inter¬ 
minable states, even to the Florida line, a most dis¬ 
agreeable journey, the Boss said. But the morning the 
car crossed the state boundary into “Sunshine State” the 
weather as if to justify its reputation became suddenly 
summer hot. Mickey felt the change most, not being 
able to discard his fur coat. He stood with his head far 
out of the window drinking in the warm, scented air 
as it rushed past him until sternly bidden to draw in 
and lie down, then lay panting on his narrow ledge, for 
the first time palpably depressed. When the car stopped 
in a long reach of spindling pines and he was allowed 
to hop out, Mickey looked about him uninterested, a 
trifle disgusted. He took a few tentative steps into the 
withered yellow grass beside the road and immediately 
was covered with prickers and burs. He returned to 
Katie and together they removed the disagreeable objects. 
Mickey jumped back into the car with an air of having 
seen all of Florida he cared to: if a dog couldn’t run 
about the fields without sticking his paws into thorns 
and messing himself with burs until his coat was a mat, 


114 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


what was there in it? So he went off to sleep and hardly 
opened his eyes on the landscape until the car turned into 
the drive of the new home. Then he roused himself, 
stood up and peered eagerly all around. He must have 
approved of the large green lawn, the pretty lake below 
the house whose waters were rufHed by a fresh summer 
wind, the tall old orange trees in the grove behind with 
their glossy green leaves among which gleamed many 
yellow balls, and the fine lofty live oaks that rose above 
the lawn, spreading a dappled shade over its greenness. 
. . . And a welcome surprise—there were four dogs 

on the lawn of the next house, pretty much of his own size, 
all interested in the new arrival. 

No sooner had the car come to its final stop before 
the front door than Mickey leaped to the ground and 
began the business of getting acquainted with his new 
neighbors. By the time Capable Katie had unpacked 
the car, taking out his own pet hat which she had brought 
all the way from Maine as well as his new orange and red 
ball presented to him in New York, and his favorite brand 
of puppy biscuit, Mickey came in to survey his new home. 
He immediately ran out through the living room to the 
large screened-in veranda which was equipped like a 
room and overlooked the lake and the flower beds, then 
upstairs to the cool, airy bedrooms and back again to 
the kitchen where Katie was already under way in a 
familiar fashion. It was evident that Mickey approved 
of the new home, all the more when he started up a 
little red bird at the corner of the house and having 


115 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


chased it out into the grove, started another and another, 
while grey squirrels chattered at the newcomer from the 
vantage of the branches above him. Yes, this place prom¬ 
ised a full dog’s life! 

So the journey which had been so much dreaded had 
ended. Katie and the Boss agreed that had it not been 
for the constant good temper of Mickey it would have 
been much drearier. He had proved to be not only a good 
traveler, cheerful under all the trials of the road, but a 
great little companion. Indeed, the long trek covering 
two weeks had brought him closer to the hearts of both. 
In the old home so many new absorbing things had kept 
turning up to distract his attention that Mickey was be¬ 
coming almost a stranger in the house; much of that 
first puppy intimacy had been lost, but the close compan¬ 
ionship of the closed car for two weeks had brought this 
all back and more. It was as if the child of the family, 
separated from them by his own diversions, had become 
once more an integral part of the home, to the satisfaction 
both of parents and boy. We had grown more intimate 
than ever on the long road. . . . The Boss, observ¬ 

ing Mickey chasing through the orange grove with the 
dog pack next door, wondered what the new home might 
do to that renewed intimacy. For the first time in his life 
Mickey was to have much dog society, of his own age and 
size, dogs that evidently ran freely all about the premises 
and far afield. . . . Mickey was breathlessly happy, 

barking and wrestling with one of his new friends. 


116 


Chapter VIII 
MICKEY’S GANG 


N EXT door to the Florida home—and a very close 
next door—there were four dogs, and up the 
alley along the large loose lot and across the orange 
groves there were more dogs. So many in fact, most of 
whom came at once to call on the newcomer in the neigh¬ 
borhood, that the place might have been called Dog 
Town. Thus Mickey, from leading a fairly isolated 
existence, largely with human companions, was plunged 
at once into an hectic life of dog society. 

His especial gang were the dogs next door, naturally. 
They were all of such a varied inheritance that nothing 
more dignified than mongrel could be said of them. 
Mimi, the matron, had some spaniel and some wire-haired 
fox in her composition. She was a small, lively, wilful, 
and intelligent female, who had a litter of pups every 
six months in defiance of all eugenics. The male that she 
had latterly favored was a tall black dog with some setter 
in him so that her puppies—which locally were in de¬ 
mand—were likely to be leggy and large (much to Mimi’s 
evident discomfort towards the end of her time). When 
Mickey arrived on the scene, Mimi was again about to 
become a mother and dragged herself feebly and clumsily 


117 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


about the grounds. She did not appeal to Mickey and 
even after she was delivered and became her active small 
self she always kept Mickey in his place, much as a 
mature matron might a presumptuous, inquisitive young¬ 
ster of an age suitable to consort with her son. 

Indeed, it was Mimi’s son, of an earlier litter, that 
became Mickey’s pal and steady comrade. Puck was a 
hobbledehoy young dog about Mickey’s age but larger 
and taller, his rough black coat always filled with innu¬ 
merable burrs (the extraction of which engaged both 
friends in their idler moments). Puck was just dog, but 
a most good natured, gentle, deprecating dog, who seemed 
only too well aware of his clumsiness and eager for an 
encouraging pat. From the first moment Puck and 
Mickey wrestled and tumbled and roughhoused hour after 
hour, with not one growl or ugly act between them. 
Mickey fresh from the bracing North had more pep than 
any of the gang and could tire them all out. But Puck 
with superior height and weight if he exerted himself 
could keep the newcomer in his place and roll him over 
and over. Mickey would take Puck’s bones away from 
him with impunity, perhaps because Puck had so many 
of them—he was always chewing at a new one—and 
perhaps because Puck had a sweeter, more yielding nature. 
Mickey quickly getting on to the feeding habits of his 
gang appeared at the neighbor’s rear door when the col¬ 
ored maid put out a pan of food or some bones and 
greedily helped himself. If the gang disapproved they 
never punished him for his snitching. Only once did 


118 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


Puck show spirit enough to snap back at the fresh neigh¬ 
bor and neither the Boss nor Capable Katie was able 
to learn the cause of this quarrel: it was all over in three 
seconds and the two pups were once more tumbling over 
each other and chasing around the grounds. 

Mickey had less to do with the other two dogs at the 
house next door. These were plain curs, dumped there 
by a friend of the family. Whether it was that Mimi 
and Puck let Mickey know that Cappy and Irish were 
not quite of the bunch or whether Mickey did not like 
them as dogs, at any rate he was never as intimate with 
them, while they lived next door, as with the rest of the 
gang. Cappy was some kind of terrier, a bit fox at any 
rate, with an ugly yellow mug. He had had an en¬ 
counter with an automobile which had left him mentally 
dazed and cowed. He was an inveterate digger and 
was considered the trouble maker, inciting the others 
to mischief. Irish, a small bleary-eyed bitch of reddish 
hue, was also maternally occupied on Mickey’s arrival. 
But having delivered herself of her impediment she 
quickly displayed a flirtatious, forward character, which 
earned her from the Boss the name of Slut. Irish was 
shameless. Mimi had character and dignity, as was 
proved by her fidelity to the big black setter dog, but Irish 
was always inviting the attention of any dog in the neigh¬ 
borhood. Irish was Mickey’s first experience with the 
aggressive female and fortunately for him she did not 
remain next door all winter. . . . 


119 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


Casual dog visitors were so numerous that no par¬ 
ticular account can be given of them. There was one 
blind pink-eyed bull dog, with a reputation for being a 
great fighter, who was a constant visitor the first weeks. 
None of the gang seemed to like him, but Mimi being 
still indisposed no one had sufficient authority to dis¬ 
pose of him. Mickey and Puck showed their dislike 
quite openly and assisted by Katie and one of the mem¬ 
bers of the family next door the bull was sufficiently dis¬ 
couraged so that gradually he gave up coming, without 
an open row. Most of the callers were like the gang, mon¬ 
grels. But there was one handsome young police dog 
of sufficiently pure breed to be somewhat superior. Mickey 
was taken with him and nosed him a good deal, but was 
also obviously afraid of him and, unless Katie was in 
the offing, kept at a respectful distance. When he chanced 
across him while in the car he indulged in a good deal 
of back talk, forgetful that the police dog might lay it 
up against an encounter some day on the open ground. 
. . . There was also a shaggy-haired gray dog who 

had sufficient consistency in his points to be of a recog¬ 
nized breed. Mickey always admired him, and when 
he became more familiar with his new home, went down 
the road some distance to pay him visits and was always 
much excited whenever he saw him from the car while 
down town. But most of the time the gang played to¬ 
gether and went on brief excursions through the neigh¬ 
boring orange groves and along the lake looking for 
the innumerable trifles which make a dog’s wanderings 
120 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


exciting. Especially after Mimi, who was a natural leader, 
had recovered her liberty from the penalty of sex, the 
bunch could be seen romping off over vacant lots, with 
no apparent objective, yet steadily drifting to some place. 

* e 

The Boss watched Mickey with the gang from the 
vantage of his open veranda, trying to discover what 
the dog system of signals or communication might be. 
All the dogs would be reposing quietly on the lawn or 
on the neighbor’s front steps, a favorite spot for con¬ 
gregating, when suddenly without any apparent cause 
they would dash off, perhaps merely into the flower beds 
of the house beyond, perhaps across the road, or down 
under the big live oaks in the direction of the little 
lake. Some one had given the suggestion, no doubt, 
and the others had followed. When they all dashed into 
the vacant lot opposite to bark at the single file of negroes 
coming and going from their work along the little path 
or trail which they had beaten out, it was more explicable. 
The dogs always barked at passing negroes, as well as at 
boys and more rarely at white people. The colored folk, 
who like dogs, probably played with them, and the steady 
volley of barks was not hostile although annoying. 

Of course, whenever any one dog seemed especially 
occupied or interested in anything such as digging for 
a mole in the garden the whole gang must be in it. The 
dog mind is quickly attracted and distracted, except in re¬ 
gard to bones: their associations are frequent and un- 


121 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


stable. The present is doubtless more vivid to a dog and 
more absorbing than to any human being, even a child. 
They progress from one stimulus to another, haphazardly, 
either by scent or sound or sight. And when a dog is 
seen trotting busily along head down as though he had 
a known objective, most likely the next moment he will 
excitedly dash off at a tangent totally absorbed by a newer, 
fresher, more compelling motive. 

Thus the Boss explained to himself Mickey’s habit 
of wandering off alone. He had always chased birds 
excitedly from his early puppy days, and the lure of 
anything on the wing had never left him. The first im¬ 
pulse whenever he was let out of doors was to make a 
dash around the corner of the house to surprise the car¬ 
dinals that remained in a thicket near the bird feed box, 
and as soon as they flew up to safety on a near-by limb 
Mickey would discover another, a grackle, black as him¬ 
self, a robust blue jay, or a gentle mourning dove. Some 
of these birds seemed to fly low, deliberately enticing him 
to pursuit, teasing him—they always escaped, even most 
of the hens—but Mickey would have started a new one 
and taken up the game all over. As no one in the gang 
had the same passion for chasing birds, often Mickey 
started his fruitless hunt by himself. One day the Boss 
noting that Mickey had not been seen for several hours 
went after him in the car, threading the different ave¬ 
nues and roads which in Florida fashion had been elabo¬ 
rately laid out in the vacant orange groves. At last about 
a mile from home the little black figure of Mickey was 


122 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


spied racing head up under an old grove of seedling trees, 
darting now this way, now that, as the special bird he 
had in view changed its aerial course. When the horn 
of the car was sounded, Mickey stopped his chase and 
came directly, joyfully for the car and warmly greeted 
the Boss and Katie with much licking and tail wagging 
as if boisterously thanking them for bringing him back 
to luncheon! 

It was in such fashion that Mickey strayed and would 
always stray far from home. He had no intention what¬ 
ever of running away, even of going anywhere in par¬ 
ticular, but he got started, distracted, absorbed—and thus 
might wander miles. (Not unlike his human brothers: 
very little errancy is ever deliberately planned, merely sug¬ 
gested from moment to moment.) 

“Mickey’s associations are too numerous and flexible,” 
the Boss commented. “If he goes on chasing things all 
over the county he will have to be kept in the house.” 

“Sure,” Katie agreed, more practically, “he’s getting to 
be a very wild dog, always running about with those 
dogs next door.” 

It was hard, all the same, to take away Mickey’s free¬ 
dom—he was so eager, so innocent of wrong intention, 
so completely happy in living his life which was more 
joyous and exciting than ever before. 

Children and dogs, especially puppies and very young 
children, are supposed to be closely sympathetic. But it 
does not always prove to be the case. Mickey had never 
seen any children before he came to live in Florida, and 
123 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


his first reaction to the small girl and the smaller boy 
next door was distinctly one of timidity. They made 
advances to him, but he shyly skipped away and for a 
long time would not let them pat or fondle him, Mickey 
was plainly not sure of them. Even after daily sight 
of them had made him less shy, so that he did not evade 
their advances he never sought them out or played with 
them, but merely endured their demonstrations when none 
of his gang happened to be about. He never wiggled and 
waved his tail or jumped up caressingly on them as he 
did with the older members of the same household. 
Children did not count for Mickey. If he had been 
brought up with them it might have been different, yet 
the dogs next door rarely played with them either. . . . 

But when Mimi’s puppies finally arrived that was an¬ 
other thing. In some way Mickey knew they had come 
—perhaps Puck communicated the fact of the arrival 
of his younger brothers—and Mickey tried energetically 
to get to them. They were in a big box in the dining 
room and no doubt through the open veranda near by 
he had heard sounds from the new beings of his own 
kind. One day he sneaked into the neighbor’s house 
through the back door and approached the litter, Mimi 
happening for the moment to be off duty, but presently 
when she returned she firmly sent Mickey about his busi¬ 
ness. Afterwards when the new puppies were brought 
out to the lawn to be photographed, Mickey thought he 
saw his chance to examine them, but although Puck 
was allowed to nose over his small brothers Mimi jeal- 


124 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


ously inserted herself between Mickey’s prying snout 
and the black and gray balls, most efficiently and posi¬ 
tively protecting her young from his curiosity. They 
were given away before he had a chance really to make 
their acquaintance. 

Before they disappeared, while Mimi was still nursing 
her brood, a serious accident happened to Mimi herself. 
She had begun to run around, leaving her two weeks’ old 
young at intervals as though she felt the need of freedom. 
We would see her trotting off down the street in the 
direction of the lake, her figure quite slim, her tail in 
the air, a competent, purposeful young matron. One 
day, however, she did not return, not all day in fact. 
The people next door who did not give their dogs the 
jealous supervision that Mickey received hardly noticed 
her absence until night when the small puppies made 
the loss of their mother vocally known to the neighbor¬ 
hood. Early the next morning, about two o’clock, Mimi 
returned home. Some one heard the metallic clanking 
of an object on the cement walk and went out to investi¬ 
gate. Mimi was there, one forepaw caught in an iron 
trap ten inches long. It was the bit of chain clinging 
to the trap which Mimi must have worked all day to 
break that had made the noise. It was old and rusted 
and finally parted—but what effort and what suffering! 
Freed from the claws of the trap Mimi limped to her 
box and settled herself among her pups. It was some 
days before she had strength to get out from her box 
and then she held up her injured leg, which was hor- 


125 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


ribly swollen and apparently broken, and limped slowly 
around. Where she had been caught was never found 
out, perhaps in some garden whose angry owner had 
taken this brutal method of ridding himself of unwelcome 
dogs, perhaps down by the lake in a trap set for a 
muskrat. She could not tell. Thereafter for several 
weeks she limped about holding up her bandaged paw 
and even after the paw was well enough for her to put 
it on the ground and scamper away with the gang she 
would raise it pathetically whenever reproved, making 
it an excuse for indulgences. . . . Mickey examined 

Mimi with curiosity but no apparent sympathy or ten¬ 
derness. It was just an interesting event to be discussed 
with Puck and the others. As soon as Mimi was well 
enough to take her place with the gang her trouble was 
forgotten. No doubt if Mickey had been there when 
Mimi got into her trouble he would have done his best 
to free her and would have licked her injured paw, just 
as he helped Puck to de-bur himself. But the inciting 
moment gone he had no imagination of the pain, no 
pretty manners to bestow on the victim. 

The habits of the two households were quite different, 
and they affected the lives of the gang. The household 
next door sat up late and permitted their dogs to roam 
until late, and rose late and their dogs whether shut 
into the garage or in the open veranda did not get out 
until breakfast. While Mickey was promptly brought 
in at suppertime and except for a few minutes before bed 
time was kept at home. But Mickey, who still slept on 
126 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


Katie’s bed, had ways of reminding her it was morning 
at the first streak of light and inducing the sleeping Katie 
to take him downstairs and open the door. How often 
at six in the morning the Boss heard Katie’s whispered 
injunction, 

“Now, remember Mickey, no noise! . . . Don’t 
bark! . . . People are still sleeping and don’t want to 

hear a little dog barking.” 

Sometimes Mickey remembered and was still. But 
often the joy of being out once more in the fresh morning 
air, with the birds twittering from the oak trees, was 
too much for his good intentions and a series of short 

sharp barks, to the tune of-“Cheer, cheer, the gang’s 

all here!” could be heard coming from the front lawn. 
It did not last long, this joyous hail to the morning, unless 
the ash man or some early worker happened to be passing 
down the street. After his preliminary scurry around 
the house to discover what the birds and the squirrels 
were doing, Mickey trotted over to the front stoop next 
door and composed himself to wait until the rest of his 
gang should be released. He lay there, his little black 
snout between his front paws, watching every animate 
thing within reach of his senses, content to wait for his 
friends, to be out in the morning air, to see this good 
old familiar world once more when it was fresh and less 
cluttered up with two legged animals than it would be 
later. . . . Katie, when the Boss’s tray was ready to 

be carried up to him, always knew where Mickey was 
to be found at this hour—waiting for his gang. 


127 


Chapter IX 

THE BITCH QUESTION AGAIN 


J UST as in Maine, Mickey had a favorite resting and 
observation spot from which to survey the Florida 
scene. Here it was the cool cement platform before the 
garage, which was always shaded by a large water oak 
tree in whose wide branches lived a colony of squirrels. 
The antics of these nimble fellows, their prodigious leaps 
from branch to branch or tree to tree around the place, 
and their sly way of spying out the ground while clinging 
concealed to the gray bark of the tree, diverted Mickey, 
who soon found that his fastest pace merely made a squir¬ 
rel mock him with a flip of a vanishing tail. There was 
much else that Mickey surveyed from his vantage point, 
the coolness of which he found refreshing even in January 
and February, for his ancestors from the shores of the 
Baltic had not provided him with a Palm Beach suit fit 
for Florida; he could watch the birds, not only the car¬ 
dinal family that lived beneath the bird box at the corner 
of the veranda but the strutting blue jays and coarse 
grackles, the cooing doves, and later on, the efficient 
mocking birds, and many others, both the kinds that 
haunted the oak trees and the tinier ones who grubbed 
in the orange grove to the rear of the garage. He could 


128 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


see as well whatever went on in the big yard of the next 
neighbor, and whatever the gang might start, when he 
would come to life with a quickness that was startling 
and disappear behind the hedge of oleanders and Turk’s 
cap. 

Mickey’s getaways were always the most silent and 
the swiftest things about him. He was there, and by 
the time your other eye rested on the spot he wasn’t. 
He might be dogging your heels so close that your walk¬ 
ing stick hit his head and by the time you looked around 
he was gone, impossible to say where, for he was very 
cunning in selecting the right place and moment for his 
fadeout. (He would have made a good “under cover” 
agent!) Evidently he studied the ground carefully, also 
the mood of the person with him, and judged quite ac¬ 
curately when he would not be observed. 

It was impossible to tell just where he had gone, once 
he had disappeared from his place on the cement floor. 
As has been said, the old orange groves reached on quite 
indefinitely, intersected by ambitious grassgrown brick 
boulevards and avenues and circles and crescents of real 
estate “developments,” of which Mickey made nothing. 
He would run fleetly, nose to ground or head in air, down 
the long rows of glossy-leaved orange trees. . . . 

When the Boss took him on a daily ramble Mickey 
showed a great deal of knowingness about places, would 
whisk around a turn, then wait to see if the Boss was 
on to this particular grove or path. Occasionally as 
they came near a cottage Mickey would race familiarly 
129 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


to the back door, and it would take considerable effort to 
dislodge him. In such cases the Boss became aware 
that there was an attraction in the shape of a dog, one of 
Mickey’s new acquaintances that was delaying him. It 
was plain that Mickey after a few days had a wider 
acquaintance with his new environment than either Ca¬ 
pable Katie (who was largely confined to motor roads) 
or the Boss, even with his daily strolls. . . . 


Mickey’s absences from the place gradually became 
more frequent and he was gone for longer periods. It 
was disturbing, for although the Florida house was on 
the outskirts of a small town with much undeveloped 
property, open “lots,” and large citrus groves, still there 
were roads and many motors on them dashing about 
in their usually aimless speedy fashion. Mickey, it was 
observed, from mere familiarity with the motor—had 
he not ridden in one going from forty to sixty miles an 
hour sixteen hundred miles, encountering thousands of 
machines on the way?—displayed a reckless indifference 
to their menace. Luckily there were many colored drivers 
who, although uncertain, had a kindly feeling for ani¬ 
mals and would stop short in mid-career rather than run 
over a dog. But motorists were not all black, nor all 
so considerate, and every time Mickey disappeared from 
his post before the garage there was a feeling of uneasi¬ 
ness in the household until he put in an appearance. 

One Sunday morning Mickey vanished after Katie’s 


130 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


return from mass, and it was not until dinner time that 
Katie called from the rear. 

“Here’s Mickey, and see what he’s got with him!” 

Mickey was wagging his tail with a queer mixture of 
conciliation and pride; close behind him was a little 
white bitch, a puppy about the same age and size as 
Mickey. The Boss recognized the small dog as one 
from a house that Mickey frequented on their walks 
around a near-by lake. 

“He’s brought his girl friend home with him,” Katie 
said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. 
The small white dog seemed conscious of her position, 
this introduction to the family of her new dog friend. 
She was ingratiating, charming, and received caresses as 
a young woman should. 

“Bring them both in and give them some dinner,” 
the Boss suggested. And presently the two small dogs 
were eating a Sunday dinner out of similar plates side 
by side on the kitchen floor. Mickey, it must be said, 
first sniffed at the plate offered his little white friend to 
see that it contained no more and nothing that his own 
did not have. After dinner as they seemed embarassed 
by so much attention they were allowed to go forth and 
no doubt Mickey escorted his friend home and remained 
to play with her for a while afterwards. 

The Boss and Katie looked at each other and laughed. 

“That is the beginning,” said the Boss. 

“He isn’t my little puppy any longer,” Katie remarked 
with a touch of regret. “He was such a nice little puppy!” 


131 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


Much as the mother likes and dislikes the first attention 
to girls that her boy manifests. 

“All the same I’m glad it wasn’t Irish,” the Boss 
observed, “Mickey shows better taste than to take to 
that slut.” 

“We should get him a wife of his own,” Katie, who 
regards marriage as one of the sacraments, not to be en¬ 
tered into lightly, said after a time, “a little black dog 
of his own kind. And then we’d always have puppies 
around the place.” 

“They might not be as nice as Mickey!” 

e v 

It was the beginning! Gradually Mickey’s absence 
became more frequent and more protracted. One day 
he did not return for his midday dinner—he had so 
many places where he found food that hunger was no 
longer an incentive—and all the long warm afternoon 
he was absent. The Boss took the car and drove slowly 
about the neighborhood looking under the orange trees 
down long vistas of green and gold in search for the little 
black figure. On his return empty handed there could 
be but one conclusion— “He’s lost or killed!” 

A solemn supper ensued, while the Boss listened closely 
for the telephone, their number being engraven on 
Mickey’s collar as a precaution. Nothing. Later in the 
evening one of the neighbors next door appeared with 
Mickey in his arms, a tired but unrepentant Mickey. 


132 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


“I found him around the lake, at a farm house clear 
the other side. He was playing with a big brown bitch. 
The woman there said he had been about all day.” . . . 

Mickey was put to bed with many admonitions from 
Katie, and a gentle scolding from the Boss which he 
took silently, blinking his eyes at Katie. Also the next 
morning he was put out of doors with strong injunctions 
not to run off. But when the Boss came down about 
nine and looked for Mickey to accompany him on his 
morning walk, there was no Mickey to be found. So 
Katie having learned where the farm was on the other 
side of the lake set off in the car, armed with a leather 
strap, a stern resolution in her eyes and a mutter of 
something, “he needs a good strapping,” on her lips. 
The Boss went along, too, from curiosity to see whether 
Katie would give her beloved the promised punishment. 

Sure enough Mickey was romping about the old frame 
house at the end of a sandy cart path. It was the sort 
of place that might beguile any dog, quite a farm for 
Florida with a big barn full of animals, ducks and 
hens, a small girl and the big brown bitch (which the 
little girl informed Katie had her own puppies indoors). 
Another instance of the frivolous matron quite contrary 
to the standard dog books; for she was romping around 
with Mickey in a more than inviting manner. . . . 

At sight of the car Mickey immediately stopped play¬ 
ing and came running fearlessly and happily toward 
Katie, who had descended with the big strap in one 
hand. She whipped up her sternness by saying, “Why 


133 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


don’t you get some dog of your own size!” as though 
to humiliate Mickey in front of his big conquest. 

Then Katie grabbed her darling by the scruff of his 
neck and began to use the strap. Mickey made no pro¬ 
test, although he looked surprised and shut his eyes. 
The beating did not go far into his heavily coated hide. 
And Katie’s anger evaporated rapidly with each blow. 
Once released Mickey shook himself, leaped lightly to 
his usual place behind the driver and proceeded to lick 
Katie gently, sweetly, as if he wanted her to know that he 
bore no grudge and realized that she had merely for¬ 
gotten herself under provocation. Then he turned with 
his blandishments to the Boss, who shamelessly received 
them, while weakly murmuring something about “being 
a bad dog.” . . . Thus Mickey was brought home 

in disgrace. 

There, as it happened, the gang in full force was es¬ 
tablished on his front doorstep, as if they were waiting 
to see the culprit brought back in disgrace. The Boss 
bore Mickey into the house without permitting him to 
accost his friends. Mickey’s ears were lying back along 
his neck: he was beginning to understand what had 
happened. . . . Within the house he retreated un¬ 

der the particular sofa he had chosen in his new home 
for periods of meditation and remained there thinking 
things over until noon, when he stole out and came to 
the Boss, who was typing at his desk. The Boss took 
no notice of the small figure planted before the desk 
and after a little while Mickey put his paws gently 
134 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


on the Boss’s knees and reaching up his head tried to 
lick his face. A plain entreaty for forgiveness! Not 
content with this when the Boss turned around he leaped 
lightly into his lap and putting his front paws on the 
man’s shoulders, ears straight back, looked longingly into 
his eyes. . . . Mickey felt his disgrace—it was intol¬ 

erable—and he said as plainly as speech: “I’ll try not 
to do it again, whatever it is you don’t like to have me 
do, but for God’s sake don’t punish me this way—I can’t 
stand it. Let’s be friends the way we’ve always been.” 

The Boss took his hat and cane, and they went for 
the usual noon time stroll. Mickey kept close beside 
him, as if to prove how good he could be. This little 
incident indicated to the Boss the only line to take with 
Mickey: it was not beatings nor severe punishment, but 
a persistent, patient effort to make him understand just 
what was wanted of him as dog. Social discipline was 
the best form of pressure for Mickey: he could not stand 
being left out in the cold, without evidences of affection 
from the persons he most loved. At any rate, senti¬ 
mental as it may sound, that was the method applied in 
the case of this small dog and it will be seen how suc¬ 
cessful it was. 

The Boss expected relapses, many, knowing how in¬ 
firm all human purposes are and how quickly good in¬ 
tentions fade. For some days Mickey was always about 
the place, usually lying on the cool cement slab under 
the big water oak tree before the garage, alert, yet con¬ 
templative. Seeing him there listening to the birds, the 
135 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


squirrels, the crickets, watching the movements of the 
gang if they made any that seemed promising—the Boss 
was impressed with the nature of the difficulty in com¬ 
municating with Mickey and Mickey’s kind. Just as 
undoubtedly Mickey touched another world than his, 
the animal world, whose sounds and acts conveyed a 
meaning forever denied to his own human understand¬ 
ing, so, too, as well Mickey shared in some small part 
the human world, thanks to the close association between 
his ancestors and mankind for numberless generations. 
Just where this mutual interchange of different worlds 
ended it was difficult to say. Mickey had made consid¬ 
erable progress in less than twelve months of life in learn¬ 
ing human speech, what odd human sounds meant— 
there could be no doubt of that—and he had also, copy¬ 
ing us perhaps, made progress in varying his own vocal 
expression which we knew how to interpret so that one 
might say without too much affectation there was a 
considerable amount of communication between us, ex¬ 
change of views and desires. The big stumbling block 
was over the ancient commandment, “Thou must!” im¬ 
posed inevitably by the responsible—and more apprehen¬ 
sive—one upon the more dependent and ignorant one. 
Of course this rule without reason could be imposed 
tyranically and harshly, with sure results of obedience, 
of a sort. The whip, etc. But rejecting such coarse 
and limited methods which have been the easy recourse 
of the strong with the weak since the beginning of time, 
there seemed but one alternative to utter lawlessness 


136 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


and that—affection. If Mickey, who without any doubt 
had a deep regard for both the Boss and Katie, could be 
made to feel how much his running off and staying 
away for long periods troubled his human friends, how 
much they disliked it, whether or not he could under¬ 
stand all their good reasons, which he probably never 
would, he might voluntarily give over his objectionable 
practices. At any rate that was the course the Boss, 
having ample leisure and a deep interest in the problem, 
resolved to take with Mickey. . . . 

So the next time Katie reported Mickey’s absence for 
a considerable period, the Boss got into the car alone— 
without the strap—and took the sandy road to Mickey’s 
lake shore farm. Sure enough there he was gamboling 
about with his big brown bitch. The Boss stopped the 
car and sounded the horn, thus gaining Mickey’s at¬ 
tention, and then opened the door. Mickey came slowly, 
much more slowly than the other times, as if he knew 
well enough what he was doing and what probably was 
awaiting him. He stood with front paws on the running 
board, ears back, and looked beseechingly at the man 
within. The Boss merely said, “Come Mickey,” and 
Mickey without hesitation jumped up behind him and 
began his tail wagging and other blandishments. The 
Boss without paying any attention closed the door, turned 
the car around and drove home. There he carefully 
took Mickey from the car into the house, and Katie open¬ 
ing the door of a well lighted airy closet shut Mickey 
up there, “to think it over.” Not a sound came from 
137 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


the closet. Mickey was “thinking it over” in complete 
silence. Once the Boss (Katie having gone to the garage) 
stole to the closet and opened the door. Mickey was lying 
calmly on the floor. He looked inquiringly into the 
Boss’s face as though to ask—“Is this enough?” but did 
not offer to come out of his cell. 

After a few hours he was taken out but treated to a 
“noncontact cure.” All his advances were ignored until 
he withdrew under his sofa from where he watched the 
room with alert eyes. . . . After a time he tried 

reconciliation once more and in due time received it. But 
he was considerably sobered, subdued all that day, and 
more than ordinarily obedient at bedtime. 

All that need be said is that the regime worked. Mickey 
went to the closet but once more. And he was never 
found again at the farm with the big bitch. Whether 
he had accepted Katie’s advice about finding some one 
of his size or had made up his mind that the escapade 
was not worth the consequences, it is impossible to say. 
Knowing the suggestibility of Mickey’s temperament 
the Boss avoided for a few days walking in the general 
direction of the farm, as offering too much temptation 
to Mickey’s still infirm purpose. But after a little while 
he decided to test him and took him there, past the fasci¬ 
nating barn and the house. Mickey ran around the 
open grounds looking for the big brown bitch, no doubt, 
but came readily enough when the Boss whistled and 
trotted ahead of him home. That episode, the boss 
reflected complacently, was ended. 


138 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


But not the impulse to wander! For a while Mickey 
was always to be found near by. The colored woman 
who came every morning to work at the neighbor’s re¬ 
ported to Katie that she had seen the small black dog 
“way down the avenue, half way to town” when she came 
by. But Mickey turned up at breakfast. Another day 
Katie making an unexpected trip to town called Mickey, 
who loved these excursions in the car with the oppor¬ 
tunities they offered for seeing the bustling streets and 
many strange dogs, but not being able to find him, de¬ 
parted alone. Half way to town past the lake she hap¬ 
pened to look into the mirror and saw Mick racing after 
the car pell-mell in a mad effort to overtake it on his 
short legs. Katie stopped for him, and much out of 
breath, greatly excited, Mickey jumped in and took his 
usual seat. 

“I think he must have a dog friend somewhere down 
there in the Circle,” Katie reported. 

If so he was sly enough to conceal his visits, making 
them when first let out, when he knew he had a long 
period free from observation, or at dark in the evening 
when several times he did not answer on being called. 

“I am sure it is a dog,” Katie asserted, and when asked 
why, added, “Mickey gets so excited when we pass a 
certain house just off the avenue along the lake.” Later 
she reported, “Well, I’ve found Mr. Mick out—it’s an¬ 
other girl friend; I came on them together. . . . 

She’s a nice looking little dog, too.” 

Evidently Katie approved of Mickey’s new choice and 


139 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


that was the reason that he was not summarily deprived 
of his liberty on the discovery of this new liaison, merely 
watched more carefully. Mickey was sly, no doubt of it, 
and this time did not mean to be discovered and deprived 
of his fun either by force or by indirect methods of dis¬ 
approbation. He took his times off discreetly, when he 
thought his getaways would not be observed, and reported 
regularly, showed himself on the place often enough 
to disarm suspicion. But his absences were lengthening 
and becoming so obvious that something must be done 
about this new development; so the Boss thought, and 
just then an unexpected event, to be related in another 
chapter, imposed itself as so often happens in life with 
a new sequela of consequences. 


All this may seem both trivial and ordinary in the 
experience of mankind and dogs. Perhaps. But tragedy 
and happiness are alike bedded in the trivial, the ordinary. 
It is the successful management of the ordinary and the 
trivial which gives the desirable life. Moreover, the results 
and the methods are in no way different from those that 
can be used in dealing with children and young people 
of the human species—and whose woeful failure is so often 
the cause of despair for the older generation in charge. 
It is easy enough with children or dogs to throw up one’s 
hands after an attempt at discipline, and cushioning 
oneself on the soft excuse of, “It’s the times we live in,” 
allow them to go their own pernicious way, either 
140 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


grumblingly on our part or with averted gaze, washing 
our hands of responsibility. Or the elder may become, 
in a vicious sense of the term, a “pal” of his young and 
share with them their license and degeneration, which 
is indubitably miserable for both. 

Discipline is an effort, both to him who administers 
and to him who receives whether dog or girl or boy. It 
requires patience, a steady intention and infinite resource¬ 
fulness to adjust means to situation and character and 
temperament. It is the most delicate matter of checks 
and balances and fine spiritual compensations known to 
man! 

In Mickey’s case the object was simple enough, to 
make him a companionable and comfortable inmate of 
one’s home. But something more, a very important 
something: to preserve as far as possible those special 
characteristics in which we delighted, for which we loved 
him, his happy nature, his love of freedom and delight 
in all outdoors. To keep just that picture of him lying 
outstretched on the cement under the oak before the 
garage door, alert, free, communicating with his own 
kind, all the dog differences in him which separated him 
so mysteriously and, in certain aspects, so advantageously 
from human kind. To preserve all this and yet keep him 
from being either a nuisance to himself or to others, to 
make the best of him for his own sake and ours. A very 
fine best it could be! . . . 

It must not be all “don’ts” and “mustn’ts,” nor scold¬ 
ings and artful punishments. It must have a full share 


141 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


of indulgences and participations. It was easy to learn 
that if one would play with Mickey he did not mind 
being kept indoors. And he was ingenious in finding 
new games, in perfecting old ones. Also he adored being 
praised, which he received superbly, with an air of 
conscious merit, ears drooping and head slightly abased 
with humid eye and occasionally a gentle purring sound 
of content. Praise became such an element of Mickey’s 
consciousness that the lack of it drew him up with a sharp 
turn and made him amenable to direction. He was always 
most delightful when most conscious of approbation. Not 
unlike many of his more intricate human counterparts! 


142 


Chapter X 
RENUNCIATION 


I N THE life of dog s as of men it is the unexpected 
which is the determining factor. It is useless to plan 
or speculate or indulge in forebodings far ahead in a 
world of such unpredictable mutability. Just when 
Mickey’s artful absences became a source of worry, also 
his indifference to the automobile danger, an unexpected 
event switched his life from these expected dangers to 
others quite different. . . . 

On his return from a short visit, the Boss found that 
Mickey had been exposed to the distemper, that dangerous 
dog disease, highly communicable and deadly, which 
combines for young dogs the evils of typhoid, measles, 
and smallpox for the human. A friend of the house 
next door precipitated it by dumping on his soft-hearted 
friends Irish, who had been diagnosed as having distem¬ 
per. Mimi and Puck had quickly developed symptoms 
that were judged by the local veterinary to be a “mild 
form” of distemper. And Mickey, who latterly had not 
seen much of his gang had spent most of the previous 
day in the company of the diseased Irish! (Very likely 
the little slut had gained a new piquancy from her absence 
during the preceding few weeks.) At once Mickey was 


143 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


bundled into the car and taken to the veterinary. What¬ 
ever the veterinary may be in large centers, in small places 
he is any kind of shiftless being accustomed to dose 
animals and willing to have a number of sick ones around 
his slovenly premises. The Boss, a confirmed skeptic on 
the medical profession, at its human best, was unfavorably 
impressed by the yellow “cracker” specimen recommended 
by the owner of Irish and sought from the head of the 
humane society a more promising practitioner. The one 
recommended at least looked clean and talked sensibly. 

“Of course there is a lot of distemper around, thanks 
to the visiting tourists from the North. They brought 
the disease with them, like so much else. They will often 
kick out a sick dog in passing through a town, being too 
indifferent to be troubled with their disabled pets, just 
drop them on the community, where they run about 
infecting others.” The lack of responsibility that 
human beings can manifest is incredible! Meanwhile, 
how about the new innoculation against distemper? 

“Yes, if you like to gamble. . . . It’s fifty-fifty 

for results, not more, and it won’t do any good if your 
dog already has the disease.” 

The Boss was a gambler and believed in trying to lock 
doors even after the horse had been stolen. So forthwith 
Mickey was lifted on a table and his good friend Katie 
holding his head and reassuring him that we were doing 
our best received three or four needle pricks and the 
fluid. He twitched a bit, but at Katie’s hands he would 
take anything, even that. Then he shook himself and 


144 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


gayly jumped to his seat in the car and was driven home. 

“He must be strictly quarantined until we know whether 
he has taken the distemper, two weeks at least,” the Boss 
pronounced. 

If you, my reader, had been allowed freedom for all 
your conscious life, untrammeled freedom to come and 
go, to follow your fancies where they might lead you, 
even into distant orchards and groves, or to run with 
your kind as wish prompted you, if you had been master 
of your own small destiny with the fewest possible restric¬ 
tions on your desires or your activities, and then suddenly 
over night, for no known or communicable reason, found 
the door closed firmly and yourself immured in a prison, 
even a comfortable and pleasant one, with a stern, “No, 
no, you can’t go out. . . . Stay back, no!” when¬ 

ever you tried to poke your nose through the opening 
door, what would you feel? Bewildered, resentful? 
Probably both, also vociferous and abusive. 

Mickey was clearly bewildered, but never, not for one 
instant resentful. He tried every trick and charm in his 
extended repertoire to get by the forbidden door, would 
sit in his begging posture waving his paws first at Katie 
then to the Master, would jump to the Boss’s lap and 
planting two small feet firmly on his shoulders would lick 
his face, with ears back in the supplicant position and tail 
coaxingly a-wave. Nothing was accomplished, even after 
a repetition of all his tricks and little whimpers before 
the door. Nothing! Mickey retired to his meditation 
corner beneath the small sofa to think it over, to remember, 


145 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


if he could, the special transgression which had earned 
him this big discipline, and after a time he would emerge 
to renew the attack first on Katie’s sympathies and then 
on the Boss. Both would say many words to him in a 
gentle tone, but Mickey’s understanding of the human 
vocabulary had not got far enough to make them all out. 
Simply he knew he was not permitted to leave the house 
except at stated intervals and then always on the leash. 

This detestable harness, which Mickey had not seen 
for months, not since he passed through the big city where 
apparently all dogs went harnessed and muzzled, was 
now brought out and buckled about his round belly. 
Mickey tried biting it, then biting the small steel chain, 
and quickly found he could not bite through either. But 
freedom even at such a price, his beloved outdoors once 
again, was so precious to him that he did not try very 
seriously to bite through his harness. He struggled and 
strained against his bonds but endured them. 

“He pulls,” Katie reported, “and he always wants to 
go to the dangerous places. Poor little devil!” 

“Don’t you let him off the leash for one minute!” the 
Boss warned. 

“Sure not!” 


So the days of Mickey’s incarceration slowly went by. 
From within his prison walls Mickey heard the active 
sounds of his world outside and growled or whimpered 
in response, the barking of members of his gang—for 


146 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


they were not quarantined—the coming and going of the 
ice man, the gardener, the squeaks of the squirrels in the 
feedbox making away with the birds’ grain, the twitter 
of the birds in the trees. He was allowed to run freely 
into the screened porch from which cage he might observe 
other dogs dashing about his own yard, or the impudent 
squirrels mocking their tormentor, or the saucy birds who 
now had another reason for jeering at him. Sometimes 
of an evening or an early morning Mickey while appar¬ 
ently lying limp and acquiescent would rouse himself and 
emit a series of deep growls. 

“Some dog about outside,” Katie interpreted. 

There were reliefs, occasional ones. Visits. When¬ 
ever the bell rang Mickey was the first at the door jumping 
and barking in exictement, not so much from the hope 
of making his escape which he had found impossible as 
for relief from his boredom in the excitement of a caller. 
Once the stranger was within the door Mickey greeted 
him or her with more than his accustomed joy and 
enthusiasm, covering them with caresses and violent tail 
waggings until it became embarassing to the Boss, who 
must explain that the dog’s cordiality was largely due to 
relief from ennui. 

Another compensation was when the Boss took hat 
and cane and produced the harness, indicating a walk. 
Mickey had difficulty in containing himself while the 
harness was adjusted and submitted patiently to being 
hurried past all his trysting spots in the danger zone 
until, arrived at some safer place, the Boss would slip off 


147 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


the chain trusting to him not to escape. Mickey never 
once revenged himself for his incarceration by taking 
flight, as he well might have done and made good a 
getaway for as long as he wished. Whenever the Boss 
called to him he came running as fast as he could and 
submitted to having the chain attached once more. The 
Boss, realizing how much these walks meant to Mickey, 
extended them and doubled their frequency. He had 
thought Mickey would find such a solitary paseo slow 
and dull. On the contrary, Mickey stuffed them with 
excitements and came home satisfied, temporarily, by 
his outing. 

There were always birds to chase wildly, moles to dig 
for, big beetles to pounce at, and innumerable other animal 
activities to enjoy even if he must enjoy them alone. 
Up the avenue across the boulevard (which seemed to 
worry the Boss) there was a large covey of quail that 
lived down by the lake in a thick jungle of bushes, quail 
which flew delightfully low and would light and start 
off once more. That covey of quail was a great resource 
to Mickey these weeks. Over in the big orange grove 
lived a flock of large speckled ducks which Mickey soon 
discovered and chased into the lake. They also flew 
low but safely enough over his head and were an endless 
resource. Also the numerous moles whose ribbed furrows 
in the soil he could trace until at just one spot he began 
digging, frantically throwing the sandy soil behind him 
in hot haste to arrive at the burrow underneath before 
the mole had escaped, as he always did. The Boss 


148 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


encouraged him in these harmless pastimes, standing by 
and helping him with his cane. When Mickey took to 
chasing hens and overtaking one got a mouthful of 
feathers in his grip, the Boss for some inexplicable reason 
was angry with him and put him on the leash immediately 
and made him feel badly by calling him opprobious 
names. That remained to the end a bone between them, 
this exception the Boss made on their walks about chasing 
hens. (Katie once took a switch to him for doing the 
same thing, having from her youth on a farm acquired 
stern notions about the rights of hens to live.) 

When the Boss called the retreat, Mickey would come 
in readily enough, submit to being leashed and trot soberly 
homewards, if not quite satisfied, at least appeased, for 
one of his wisest characteristics was to take all he could 
get and make the best of what came his way. He would 
enter the kitchen wagging his plume and wiggling to 
tell Katie all about it, have a drink of water, or perhaps 
a puppy biscuit. Since his incarceration his appetite had 
greatly improved and he no longer disdained that resource 
of his early days; then he would curl up under the lounge 
to snooze until the next occasion for liberation. 


These occasions his two friends made as numerous as 
possible, and Mickey never let them forget one. “He’s 
nothing but a little bundle of habits,” Katie pronounced. 
Five times each day it came to be, and Mickey was always 
waiting a little before each recess period and quite willing 


149 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


to remind one of his due. There was the first time as 
soon as Katie was dressed, a brief period, and then when 
the Boss was dressed after his breakfast and came down 
stairs. Mickey was always on hand at the Boss’s dressing 
time, coming up to his room as soon as he heard the 
water running for the bath and frisking around joyously 
and suggestively through the detailed operations of 
clothing a human being. He helped with stockings and 
shoes—or hindered. And when the Boss finally buckled 
on his wrist watch and said, “Well, Mickey shall we take 
a walk?” Mickey barked an excited approval. . . . 

Next was the noon outing, which was supposedly at 
twelve-thirty after the Boss rose from his desk and while 
Katie was preparing dinner. But Mickey pushed this 
hour forward, bit by bit, by urgent and repeated hints 
until it came to be noon. On his return from the noon 
walk there was dinner, which Mickey took with the Boss, 
Katie laying down a newspaper beside the table and giving 
him a big bowl of what he liked most, for this was Katie’s 
way of making his imprisonment easier. Also after he 
had licked up his own bowl there was always the chance 
he might be able to wheedle the Boss out of some tidbits, 
and he would sit up patiently, occasionally waving a paw 
until rewarded by a bit of fish or meat or pastry. 

After dinner there was nothing but another long nap, 
which in the warm afternoon on a full stomach was not 
so bad. This was interrupted by the Boss’s painting 
lesson; Mickey liked the young woman who came to give 
the lessons and made a great fuss over her. The lessons 


150 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


took an hour, and then came the big period of the day. 
Whenever Katie went to town for market in the mornings 
she took Mickey with her and in this way he kept in 
touch with his numerous friends among the town dogs, 
leaning far out of the window to call out to them, to hurl 
defiance at them safely from the vantage of the swiftly 
moving car, or would express his disapproval of them to 
Katie’s ears. Mickey was distinctly social and loved to 
sit “minding the car,” while Katie shopped, and observing 
everything that went on in Main street. And frequently 
there were other cars with dogs in them parked near by. 
Only Katie had the provoking habit of putting up the 
car windows to within a few inches of the top. (This 
happened after Mickey once boldly leaped through the 
open window and trotted into a shop after her.) 

Elsewhere I have mentioned the cultivation and the 
growth of the possessive sense in an animal associated 
closely with human beings (in whom that sense has so 
extravagantly been developed!). Mickey at a very early 
age took Katie’s admonition, “Mind the car,” quite 
literally and would growl at any stranger who merely 
approached the car, even somebody who might have been 
talking a few minutes before to Katie or the Boss. This 
is a convenient trait for the peripatetic owners of motor 
cars, and not so unlovely in a dog because of his complete 
sincerity, as it is in men with their hypocrisy. . . . 

As to food it was interesting to note that packages 
containing the most tempting viands such as fish and 
raw meat could be left on the seat beside Mickey safely: 


151 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


he would merely sniff the package over, recognizing that 
its contents did not belong to him. But once given a 
bone, even if he did not care immediately to devour it, 
he would growl at any one, even the Boss, who came 
near it. The bone to Mickey was something special, 
inviolate. Anything else he would surrender after a little 
playful resistence. But a bone never! except to Katie, 
the last tribute of devotion and submission to her will 
that he testified. One day on the noon walk with the 
Boss, Mickey smelt out an old bone some dog had buried 
in a deserted orange grove and went into ecstacy over his 
find. He dug it up, then rolled over and over on it (a 
singular mark of ecstatic joy, quite ritualistic, which 
Mickey performed only on special occasions, as over his 
first discovery of salty seaweed on the shore related in 
a previous chapter). The Boss having retraced his steps 
to discover what attraction was keeping Mickey unmind¬ 
ful of all commands found him performing this rite. 
When ordered to come, Mickey picked up the big, greasy, 
green treasure and reluctantly followed. But he could 
not be persuaded to drop the bone. Ears back and head 
down, the stinking bone grasped firmly in the full stretch 
of his long jaws, he was a perfect symbol of “dogged” 
obstinacy: one might slay him, but he would not relax 
those jaws and yield that bone! It was an awkward 
predicament for the Boss. He did not wish to provoke 
a controversy with Mick, which might have to be settled 
by force and might well evoke disagreeable manifestations 
of temper, that both would regret and that would disturb 


152 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


their close intimacy. So he resolved on evasion, on 
passing the buck. Hooking the leash to the belly 
strap he led Mickey homeward. Mickey, his ears still 
flat in defiance, his jaws firmly grasping his ill-smelling 
treasure, trotted along willingly enough, and in this 
ridiculous order they traversed the busy boulevard and 
down the long block to the house. There Katie was 
immediately called upon to arbitrate the dispute. Capable 
Katie without pause grabbed the bone and said sternly, 
“Drop it, Mick!” at the same time bending his head 
upwards. And Mickey peacefully dropped it and looked 
reproachfully at his divinity. But instead of commiserat¬ 
ing him she immediately grabbed a dish cloth and warm 
water and swabbed out his mouth, talking about filthy 
bones and a bad dog. Mickey took her reproaches 
meekly, also his curtailed liberty, and went off to play 
with an old dried bone that Katie had given him and 
from which he had sucked every last memory of sweetness 
it may once have had. . . . 

Now that we are on the subject of bones it is well to 
add that to a dog they have sentimental and play values 
as well as nourishment values. Mickey liked to keep his 
bones a certain time, regarding them, handling them, even 
playing with them. One day he would sit down in a 
serious mood, the bone firmly grasped between his two 
small black paws and tear every strip of flesh from it, 
then ingeniously suck out any lurking marrow fat, and 
at last with the bone smooth and clean, he would take it 
edgewise between his grinders and patiently proceed to 
153 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


grind it slowly up. Thus it would last him for some time 
and even when too large or too hard for him to crush with 
his grinders, it had play value, something to toss up in 
the air and pounce on in a make-believe pursuit, something 
to hold between his paws and roll over on his back with 
and grumble away to for the quarter-hour at a time. 
. . . Mickey never traveled without one of these 

precious talismans in the car with which he beguiled 
many a weary hour of scenic landscape. Old bones were 
kept by provident Katie in the little cupboard under his 
seat in the car, to be produced at restless moments. And 
Mickey always hailed one of these old and forgotten 
treasures with a renewed alertness of interest. A bone 
was more than just so much meat and hardened tissue: 
it was the symbol for his race of sustenance and contention, 
ritual and plaything. 

Often these warm spring afternoons the Boss took a 
ride in the car, which Mickey always shared, and during 
his quarantine the Boss saw to it that at least once a 
day, on these rides, he had his full freedom in some remote 
place on a wooded road where he might run and make 
discoveries among the sparse Florida pines or in the 
mucky swamps. Mickey knew that somewhere the car 
would draw up beside the road, and the door would be 
opened, and he would be invited to jump out. He 
scanned the landscape closely from his seat behind the 
driver, with a lean, anxious look on his black face, and 
sometimes he would pant from excitement as the car 
penetrated the sort of country he liked best, where innum- 


154 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


erable birds from great white cranes to flitting warblers 
offered endless sport. He would put a paw on the driver’s 
shoulder as though to advise him where to stop. Once 
on the ground he gave a look around at the unfamiliar 
landscape, spied a winged object and was away in ever- 
widening circles, until the call back or the motor horn 
honking notified him of the car’s departure. Mickey 
was more obedient these days than ever before in his 
short life and rarely kept the car waiting. He seemed to 
have made the discovery that his precious freedom, such 
scraps of it as he have left, might be taken from him 
altogether if he did not mind promptly, scrupulously. 
(Maybe he also feared being left behind!) When he 
returned to the step, dripping from some pool of water 
and panting with the exertion of running and jumping 
through underbrush for several miles, he would look up 
at the Boss happily and waving his tail jump up beside 
him and give him a few grateful licks of his warm tongue. 
The Boss would feel amply repaid for his effort such as 
it was, and Mickey, lolling and recovering his breath, his 
eyes closing dreamily, would be driven home to his 
immurement. After these wood romps Mickey did not 
seem to mind being shut up. He would fetch out a 
frayed ball and try to coax someone to play with him, 
as if his released nerves still tingled with energy. He 
would shake his old ball in front of the Boss, and then 
prance invitingly away to start the game of hide and seek 
to which Mickey had added of his own initiative the 
game of tag. As soon as he was caught he would 
155 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


surrender the ball, which must be hidden (or thrown to 
a new spot) to be recovered and again brandished and 
so on. . . . Or, if the Boss had his supper in bed, 

Mickey would come upstairs into the bedroom, proceed 
straight to the small table in the corner where was kept 
a private cache of his toys, especially a much chewed 
scarf that had taken the place of his old hat, and jumping 
on the bed start a game of tug which gave an opportunity 
for a variety of gurgling growls—the more growling, the 
livelier the game, until the Boss would roll him over and 
over in pure roughhouse, while Mickey snatched at hand 
or elbow or slyly made a flank attack on the leg beneath 
the blanket, emitting squeals of pure delight. 

It was noticeable that Mickey became more playful 
and much more companionable as the days of his incar¬ 
ceration went by. When he ran with the gang he was 
too tired when he came in at meal times for less exciting 
human society (as children who are allowed too constant 
play with other children). But when he was so largely 
confined to human society Mickey made that do. Com¬ 
pensation is the law of all discipline, involving a shift 
in interest. Mickey was insistent upon a certain amount 
of attention, of being played with. He also discovered 
new ways of playing by himself and occupying himself 
during his long hours of confinement beside the unfailing 
resource of naps beneath the sofa. The Boss noting 
the good tempered way in which he took his curtailed 
liberties, the cause for which must remain mysterious to 
Mickey, tried to make up for his lack of freedom by 
156 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


many indulgences and periods of rough housing, with 
the result that soon all the old intimacy of puppy days 
returned. Both he and Katie decided that instead of 
being a trouble Mickey’s quarantine had brought him 
back to the house and revealed new, pleasant aspects of 
his dog character that might not otherwise have been 
developed. Mickey had become again the much loved 
and constant companion. 


Nevertheless, observing certain looks on the little black 
face, a certain sober drawing of the brown eyes as Mickey 
gazed longingly through the screen of the porch or hopped 
up on the sofa to observe through a window passersby and 
other free dogs, also his frolic eagerness whenever he 
thought some one was about to take him outside even on 
the hated leash, the Boss had compunctions. He was 
doing almost exactly what he had promised he never 
would do,—keeping a small animal who longed for liberty 
shut up, caged, for his own pleasure, just as the two 
pitiful yapping pets of his neighbor in Maine were kept! 
How often he had criticised the attitude of that neighbor 
who had said, “I keep dogs for my pleasure, not for 
theirs” which seemed to him then, (and still does!) the 
very pith of insolent egotism. He was keeping Mickey 
safe from harm for his own good pleasure. And if this 
enforced seclusion were maintained long enough, Mickey’s 
charming buoyancy and abounding delight in living 
would fade out and he would become like those two listless, 


157 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


peevish neighbor dogs last Summer. . . . Never! 

Not if he had to separate himself from Mickey for good. 
If some way in which Mickey would have a reasonable 
amount of free life could not be found, then he must 
go where he could. 

The Boss discovered in his hunt for suitable open 
spaces for Mickey’s outings a use—the first he had 
found—for the invariable Florida golf course, with its 
long reaches of close-cropped turf running between strips 
of long pines or through miniature swamps (which held 
turtles and frogs as well as birds of all kinds!). It 
became his daily custom to take Mickey to the golf course 
and sit there in the oncoming twilight when the golfers 
were straggling homewards far away on the last holes, 
while Mickey raced and danced and dug and prowled to 
his heart’s full content. Mickey began to suspect where 
he was going as soon as the car turned a certain comer 
by the lake and in his joy at the certainty he would lay 
his head on the Boss’s neck and give him an encouraging 
lick. Before the car came to a stop, a quarter mile before, 
Mickey was alert, perched on the rim of the door window 
peering far oiit to see what birds were moving, and as 
soon as he alighted he was away for one of his long 
chases, which now took the place of his puppyhood 
“marathons.” He could be seen far away head high in 
air on the futile chase of a bird or dancing through the 
scrub palmetto among the woods, leaping, soaring in the 
ecstasy of happy flight. In the oncoming twilight he 
seemed like a bird himself with his peculiar little soaring 
158 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


leap when he gathered his feet under him and touched 
ground lightly with his front paws for another spring 
upwards and on. Sometimes after a long giro , which 
must have covered a few miles of woods and open golf 
course, he would come flying back to the car, as though 
to make sure all was well, and without stopping a moment 
was off on a new course. It was warm these days, with 
a moist April warmth, thunder caps in the sky, and when 
Mickey became too thirsty he would drop down the bank 
of a huge drainage ditch or plunge into a pool in a 
swamp, lap and lap, and then go on again. 

Strolling about on the deserted golf course and a little 
way into the scrub, the Boss would have delightful 
glimpses of Mickey in full flight, perceptions of his lithe 
beauty, his blissful joy in action—a small dark shadow 
moving swiftly on the horizon. He also had a perception 
of the suavity of the characteristic Florida landscape of 
sand and pines and more sand and straight spindley pines. 
If it had not been for these half hours just at evening 
while Mickey did his perpetual chase, his master would 
have failed to perceive the charm of Florida, the quality 
which had made a friend from Maine exclaim, “How 
lovely, those long pine reaches!” and the Boss had said 
wonderingly, “What’s lovely in them? I’d swap the 
whole state of Florida, which consists of thousands of 
miles like that, for one rocky old Maine pasture and its 
gnarled pines!” But during the twilight hours when the 
rosy sunsets faded imperceptibly into amber and blue and 
grey, and at last into shadow, he came to see how each 
159 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


and every landscape, each and every corner of nature’s 
face has its own mite of charm if it be but searched for 
long enough in the right spirit. The secret for Florida 
was—solitude, and solitude in this tourist ridden land was 
the last thing ordinarily attainable. But during Mickey’s 
half hours, except for a few negro laborers—and negroes 
harmonize with dusky solitary landscapes better than their 
white brothers—leaving their labor on the links, there 
was no one to intrude “personality” on the silent pines, 
the grey vistas of far-off solitudes. So the Boss had his 
compensation also! 

Another was Mickey’s look of gorged satisfaction when 
dripping and weary at last he was gathered into the car 
and with dirty paws on the Boss’s shoulder they set out 
for home and supper. 

Thus two, three weeks passed and the necessity for 
seclusion being over, quarantine was gradually relaxed. 
The Boss was curious to see what effect the regaining of 
his lost freedom would have upon Mickey. He more 
than expected that the first reaction would be a time of 
absence while he roamed around and renewed broken ties, 
especially with his different “girl friends.” But not at all. 
It was early morning when he was first let out without 
the leash. For a moment he stood looking about him as 
if a little bewildered, suspecting a trick. Then he trotted 
around to some of his old haunts but soon went over to 
the neighbor’s doorstep and lay there quietly, waiting for 


160 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


Mimi and Puck to be let out. Not once did he wander 
off when he was put out without restraints in the early 
morning. He had lost the habit! Or perhaps he was 
fearful of being shut in again. Whatever it may have 
been he was always to be found when Katie opened the 
door and called, “Mickey, want some bacon with the 
Boss?” 

The Boss watched for the first meeting and reunion of 
Mickey and his Gang, especially with Mimi and Puck, 
his especial pal. Once or twice during his quarantine 
he had been ignominiously hustled along the street away 
from Puck, who had made advances rebuffed by the Boss, 
and Mickey had seemed puzzled by this brutality. He 
had enjoyed his limited freedom for several days before he 
chanced to meet the other dogs. One day as he was 
trotting out with the Boss for the noon encounter with 
the flock of quail, Mimi came down the walk accompanied 
by her son. Puck loped in his ungainly fashion to Mickey, 
who ignored him quite completely, being occupied with 
renewing acquaintance with Mimi. This matron seemed 
wizened and dwarfed by her recent illness and was rather 
bored with Mickey’s exuberance. Soon she betook herself 
homewards followed by her hobbledehoy son. Mickey 
trotted on his way with the Boss, no more affected than 
if he had met some strange dogs, perhaps less. Once 
after that, before his departure from Florida, Mickey 
encountered cursorily his old dog friends but without 
excitement or apparent pleasure. Indeed, he made far 
less of them than he did of their good master, the Reverend 


161 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


Doctor, who was always the occasion of much demonstra¬ 
tion from Mickey. 

These facts gave ground for some meditation on the 
part of the Boss. Is it possible that dogs have no strong 
ties with their own kind? It would seem so. Like boys 
at a boarding school they play around in packs but do not 
really cleave fast to each other. School boys prefer home 
deep underneath, and during vacations or after breaking 
their school ties they quickly forget their former mates. 
The human life, imperfectly shared as it is by dogs, be¬ 
comes for them more interesting, with more vivid rewards 
than the freest, most varied life of the dog world. Dog’s 
interests are naturally much more ephemeral and imme¬ 
diate than men’s. It is the occupation of the moment, the 
excitement and incentive of the present that fills their 
attention. They live far more than adult beings in the 
flowing moments: and in that respect, as compared with 
their more complex and intricate fellows, most simple 
people are like dogs. But the dog keeps his lively interest 
in his human friends. At least Mickey gave frequent 
proofs of retaining his memories and emotions over con¬ 
siderable absences. The Boss had often tested that! The 
joy and warmth of Mickey’s welcome after a journey was 
one of the pleasantest features and rewards of home¬ 
coming. He was inclined to accept the dictum that dogs 
prefer the human beings they are attached to to any dog 
companionship, however close. It is close but not intimate. 
In looking back over the four months of the Florida 
visit it was plain that latterly, even before the sharp 


162 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


separation caused by his quarantine, Mickey had gradually 
seen less of his friends next door, played less and less with 
Puck and the rest. Frequently he went off alone, as if 
he felt a need of enlarging his dog circle, of getting the 
zest of new acquaintances. Perhaps he found Puck dull— 
he was not a bright dog—and both he and the much 
mothered Mimi were less energetic than Mickey. Maybe 
when Mickey discovered his real mate among dogs he 
would become as closely attached to him—or her—as to 
his human friends. For the dog world is at least as 
varied in characteristics and dispositions as the human 
world, and it is not always easy for a discriminating, 
active young dog like Mickey to find the ideal companion 
any more than it is for the eager young human being. 

At any rate, this line of observation lessened any 
compunction the Boss might have over the coming break¬ 
up of Mickey’s relations. The weeks of quarantine and 
increased human intimacy in his isolation from dogs had 
made it all the easier to take him away from his Florida 
home when it was necessary to depart. There would be 
no sad, lonely look in Mickey’s mobile face. For as 
Katie sagely observed: “Mickey carries his home with 
him as long as he is with us. Wherever we are is home— 
and his habits!” 


163 


Chapter XI 

HOME, REAL HOME AGAIN! 


ETHER, as Capable Katie held, Mickey 



VV understood everything said to him or not, he 
divined in an uncanny way an impending change. Just 
as children sense without being able to express their 
apprehensions, so Mickey knew from close observation 
that the household was about to break up. Not only 
were the well known bags taken from hiding places and 
opened to receive clothes and books, but his favorite chairs 
and sofas were encumbered with bundles which he was 
told not to disturb. Katie’s habits were singularly awry: 
she did not take him to market mornings, nor dawdle 
with him on the evening walk. She was busy all the time 
and inclined to tell him to amuse himself instead of 
bothering her in her cleaning and packing. He did amuse 
himself by poking his nose into every corner and standing 
around, his serious brown eyes absorbing each movement 
in the household. These last Florida days he stuck close 
to the house, not merely because he was curious about 
what was happening, but also because he had no mind 
to be left behind. The Boss tried to reassure him, telling 
him he was going home and that he would never be left 
behind, but Mickey was taking no chances. 


164 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


The last hour and actual departure were commonplace. 
Mickey, without even a glance at Puck, who was “hanging 
around,” mounted to his accustomed perch in the car, 
which he had seen packed by Katie and the negro boy 
the evening before, and gazed out of the window as if 
he were merely going to the market or the golf course 
for a run. He hailed his little girl friend down the 
avenue with his usual bark and wag of the tail, but showed 
no special concern. . . . His own bag was in the car, 

he knew; he had seen it packed,—his brush and comb 
(which he considered playthings), his own towels and 
soap and flea powder, his favorite toys, and a box of his 
puppy-biscuit, which he still ate when very hungry. Katie 
had kept even his last polished bone, and it lay beside 
him on the shelf of the car. 

After the first restlessness on discovering that this was 
no ordinary ride, Mickey settled down and adapted 
himself to the long journey as he had when he left the 
north. He made the most of his narrow quarters, 
changing from the shelf to the Boss’s lap or hanging 
out of the window as far as a firm grasp of his curled 
tail would permit. By the second day Mickey had 
regulated his bowels with an abundant salad of juicy 
grass, which he found by the roadside at a halt, declined 
to eat until the day’s motoring was over and reconciled 
himself to an indeterminate period of roll, roll, roll. He 
slept. The faster the car moved the more completely he 
curled himself into a tight black ball and became oblivious 
of everything. Only when the car slowed down on 
165 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


entering a town did he return to life, jump up to see what 
was happening, and become at once his eager, alert self. 
Of course, all livestock along the road interested him 
keenly. If there had been enough pigs and horses and 
cows and dogs and hens he would never have batted an 
eye from Florida to Maine. Something in other animals 
spoke to him intimately—even hens! And yet for com¬ 
panionship he preferred human beings to whose objective 
appearance he was apparently indifferent, whom like 
motor cars he took so much for granted. 

On the first day out the car was stopped at the further 
end of a long narrow bridge. A fat “cracker” in a broad 
brimmed hat stepped forward and opened the rear end 
of the car. It was only the third “quarantine” examination 
that had been made since they had left, and the Boss 
inquired mildly what they were looking for this time. 
“Ticks,” the officer replied, poking about in the luggage, 
“have you any fruit or vegetables?” 

Katie shook her head; it was a warm day and she was 
not anxious to repack the car a third time. The tick 
quarantine officer removed his broad brimmed hat and 
scratched his head. “All right,” he said, “go on!” patting 
Mickey’s outstretched head. 

“He’s the only one interested in ticks,” the Boss jested, 
as he put the car in gear. “He’s quite a specialist in 
ticks!” 

The cracker drawled back,— 

“We don’t take no acount of dogs.” 

“That’s government efficiency,” the Boss observed, after 


166 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


the car got under way. “Mickey has a lively colony of 
ticks under his long hair, as we know, to distribute through 
the State of Georgia, but as he doesn’t come under the 
head of ‘livestock’ they let him in!” 

“Fruit and vegetables,” Katie muttered scornfully; 
“that’s like the corn-borer quarantine back home. . . . 

You’d think folks could find something better to do than 
hold up travelers for such nonsense!” 

“But they get paid for making a nuisance of 
themselves.” 

“Paid by whom?” demanded literal Katie. 

“By ourselves, of course. . . . That’s what gov¬ 

ernment is,” said the Boss. 

Katie looked puzzled. Mickey who had been scratching 
himself settled to another long snooze. 

Mindful of Mickey’s bored endurance, the Boss pulled 
up every few hours. The car rolled to the side of the 
road near an open field or stretch of woodland, and the 
door opened Mickey jumped down. One shake of his 
hairy body, often not even that, and life resumed for him 
its wonted interest: a glance around to see if there were 
any birds on the wing, and if not a quick dash into the 
woods, nose close to the ground picking up trails unseen 
by human eye, so vivid to him. He never wandered far, 
keeping always an eye on the car, and as soon as the 
box on wheels began to move he was there to jump into 
his place, refreshed and alert. For a while he would 
balance himself on the Boss’s knees examining the scenery, 
panting gently from his exertions, then with a resigned 


167 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


look in his brown eyes he relapsed into inanimation. This 
capacity to throw himself quickly into the warm current 
of habitual sensations, to make the most of any respite 
from monotony, was one of Mickey’s most valuable 
qualities as a traveler. Another was his irresistible good 
nature, his total freedom from crossness or meanness, such 
as few human beings fail to develop on a long motor 
journey. Anything his friends did not want him to do, 
as for instance to balance himself on the window ledge 
his head thrust far out to take the rushing air full on 
his face, he would easily abandon after a gentle warning,— 
“Mickey! Head in!” And he never quite lost his zest for 
play, for roughhousing, no matter how long and hot and 
tiresome the ride might be. He would bite the Boss’s 
hands or gently claw him or nose in his pocket for a bit of 
chocolate, which he dearly loved. . . . 

Yet Mickey was older than on the way to Florida. 
The chief indication of his maturity was in his behavior 
in hotels. He had the same good manners, which by 
now were too deeply ingrained to be forgotten, but he 
was more conscious of the moving society in these cara- 
vanseries, of the footsteps around and above, of coming 
and going in the corridors, of coughing and murmuring 
voices, and occasionally he growled when he heard what 
seemed to him hostile human sounds. The Boss while 
correcting him sympathized with his impulse to express 
disgust at the ugly noises of a gregarious humanity. For 
the Boss did not like herding, even in a good hotel, any 
better than Mickey did. But for social convenience 


168 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


Mickey must learn to ignore these evidences of near 
neighbors. It was a difficult lesson for him to learn and 
never quite mastered. He was likely at any time to break 
out in a low disgusted growl at some offending stranger, 
unseen. 

When on the way north the car stopped rolling on¬ 
wards over the interminable road, and the household 
established a temporary residence in a quiet little apart¬ 
ment where only occasional and inoffensive noises were 
to be heard, Mickey must growl his disapprobation of 
his new neighbors from under a bed where he had at 
once established his private lair—even in his sleep! No 
one could pass by on the street or up the alley to the 
garages in the rear without Mickey’s “passing remarks” 
as Katie called his growls. Constant reproof made this 
habit less offensively aggressive, more chastened, but not 
quite suppressed. The Boss would occasionally catch 
him in the act, so to speak, when the dog’s sensitive 
hearing would reveal the nearness of a stranger of whom 
the Boss himself was unaware. Mickey’s long lean jaw 
would instinctively part, his throat muscles contract; the 
growl would be hastily suppressed at the warning, 
“Mickey, what did I say? Stop it!” The conflict of 
the dual impulse, to growl and to obey, was comical and 
interesting. In that far off time when Mickey’s ancestors, 
the little black fox and the round black bear, lived 
tribally such herding together of indifferent masses of 
strange beings was of course unknown. Then it was 
a duty, the first and most imperative, to warn other 
169 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


members of the tribe of the proximity of a probably 
hostile stranger. To bark was to live—and also to 
triumph! What had taken possibly thousands of years 
to instill into the dog’s nervous centers could not be eradi¬ 
cated in a few days: to bark was to be dog. Indeed 
Katie, nearer that primitive society than the Boss, had 
slight sympathy with the effort to suppress Mickey’s 
barking and growling. “He’ll forget to be a watch dog,” 
she said. 

“He must discriminate,” the Boss insisted. . . . 

For precisely as the human being has been compelled 
to modify his instinctive impulses, and is engaged today 
all the time in suppressing some of his dearest inheritances 
from long lines of ancestry that lived under different 
conditions, so the dog can be taught to omit his instinctive 
growl, and to substitute for it a cautious observation. 
Nor are blows necessary to achieve such a result. A 
dog can be made to understand, at least pragmatically, 
the distinction between human presences in the corridors 
of a hotel or on the walks of a city street from strangers 
prowling within his own domains. Just as Mickey so 
quickly distinguished the stranger in his own car from 
one who tried to enter his master’s car without permis¬ 
sion. Civilization for the dog as for the human being 
lies largely in the ability to make such subtle distinctions. 
One of the reasons why Americans have lagged in their 
achievement of a refined civilization is their seemingly 
innate inability to distinguish between the rights of them¬ 
selves and the rights of others in common public places. 


170 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


Is the “guest” of a hotel who turns on in a public room 
a victrola or a radio, enjoying complacently what en¬ 
tertains him at the possible torture of others, more civilized 
than the dog who growls at the footsteps of strangers out¬ 
side his master’s door or the rumbling noise of their voices? 

In one instance the Boss sympathized with Mickey’s 
resentful expression, and that was when a waitress ven¬ 
tured to pat him while he was eating his dinner peace¬ 
fully beneath the table. Mickey endured with consider¬ 
able patience a great deal of undesired attention from 
strangers, who would pat and talk to him undiscriminat- 
ingly. Rarely, as when he was engaged in the engrossing, 
important matter of getting his food, he would emit a 
low warning growl, nothing more, just “Hands off 
please!” Even dogs have their reserves, their limits of 
intimacy, their preferences as to caresses. 

Another of the superstitions about dogs was broken 
by Mickey on this journey. How often the Boss had 
heard that dogs dislike and avoid sick people, even 
those they love best if ill! Something about the sick 
human body is supposed to be offensive to the sensitive 
dog smell. But it is not true. On the long journey 
Katie was taken ill and for a few days suffered with a 
high fever. Mickey was not permitted at first to enter 
her room. He lay for hours at a time outside the room 
trying with all his persistence and ingenuity to squeeze 
in whenever the door was opened. These trying days 


171 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


he was very good, making as little trouble as possible, 
quite docile and passive, but sad, not playful. He looked 
questioningly at the Boss, and lay nose between paws 
patiently waiting. At last when allowed to slip through 
the door, he leaped lightly on the bed and lay quietly 
against Katie licking her arm gently, soothingly, lay 
there for hours, content to be close to the loved one. 
Mickey had no hesitations, no fears of contracting the 
disease, no dislike of an ill body. ... In fact, 
Mickey was ever keen to feel physical disability and 
modified his natural good spirits in keeping with a 
suffering friend. How often the Boss had known him 
to return along a trail and sit patiently between his 
master’s legs or as close to him as he could get, waiting 
for him to rise and move on. Mickey may not have 
understood what was the matter, but he had an unerring 
instinct that something was wrong with his friend and 
that he must stay as close to him as he could. Dogs 
do not always think of themselves first! 


The Hill in Maine still wore its drab winter dress 
when at last the car pulled up beside the lilacs at home. 
Mickey had been leaning out of the window during the 
past few miles, his ears pricked forward, his bushy tail 
gently shaking. He had barked at his draggled uncle 
who was skulking up the hill from the bridge, and he 
was panting with excitement when the car door was opened 
and he leaped forth. 


172 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


“Mickey knows where he is,” the Boss observed. 

“Of course! Did you think he would forget his home?” 

Mickey disappeared around the corner of the kitchen 
by his old pen, then slowly nosed his way to the wood¬ 
shed, the garage, and back to the house by the lower 
path picking up the old clues. Presently he came up the 
veranda steps whimpering as of old to be admitted. Once 
inside the house he rushed upstairs and down, visiting 
every room, to make sure it was really true, that he was 
at home once more! They had arrived late and that 
evening Mickey seemed subdued, perhaps tired from 
his long journey, perhaps dazed by the sense of over¬ 
whelming good fortune. But he roused Katie early the 
next morning and began a thorough investigation of 
the premises, rushing distractedly to and fro, repeating 
his longest marathons for the pure joy of following the 
old familiar paths. This mood of joy was maintained 
for several days. He would suddenly jump up and begin 
to dash hither and thither, as if a sense of joy in recovery 
of all he had lost had come across him afresh inciting 
him to renewed expression. 

Every now and then he would trot to the veranda 
or to Katie’s door and whimper to be let in so that he 
could demonstrate his feelings to the friends inside by 
joyous little barks, by leaping up and catching their 
hands to lick, as if he associated them with his happiness. 

“And now can you say that Mickey didn’t miss his 
home this winter!” said Katie, who was herself overjoyed 
to be back in the familiar place. 


173 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


“Well, he didn’t tell us so,” the Boss rejoined. 

“Mickey isn’t like some folks, telling all he feels. . . 

The Boss was curious to see what effect the Florida 
experience—and added age—might have on Mickey’s 
home habits. Would he take to wandering like his uncle, 
return to the forbidden highway? At first Mickey visited 
his old acquaintances on the hill, the dogs who used to 
call on him, especially Buddy, the handsome collie next 
door who was usually tied up to a tree and could not 
return calls. But these social visits once made, Mickey 
stuck more closely than ever before to his home, to the 
house. He could be found at almost any time on the 
veranda steps or on the old mat by the rear door waiting 
to be let in. And he elected to pass the brightest of 
the morning hours when the new green, the shy May sun¬ 
light invited one outside, within the house, usually in 
the Boss’s study under the lounge. This was a new de¬ 
velopment. 

The homekeeping habit persisted all summer long, 
indeed, it increased. It would be easy to sentimentalize 
this new manifestation of home attachment. It was plain 
that the greater intimacy due to the two long motor 
journeys had affected Mickey in some way, made him 
perhaps a little fearful of losing his human friends, or 
what was more likely, his good times had become so 
closely associated with them, their companionship, what 
they did for him, that he had no temptation to wander. 
Whatever the cause it was an endearing manifestation 
and one that solved the great problem of danger from the 
174 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


highroad. Mickey almost never went anywhere with¬ 
out the company of one of his friends. 

He had not lost his delight in the woods, in walks, 
far from it! As was quickly proved when the Big-Man 
came later in the summer and the long wanderings in 
search of never attained objectives recommenced. Mickey’s 
squeals of delight in the woods testified to the outdoor 
quality of his nature. But he did not care to wander 
alone or with other dogs. The long days of confinement 
with human beings had made him dependent on them 
for companionship, for real happiness. . . . Mickey 

was not sluggishly dozing away his fine mornings in the 
warm study, withdrawn under the lounge his brown 
eyes fastened on his master, watching his every move. 
As soon as he rose from his work table and reached for 
his hat and stick Mickey was trotting at his side waiting 
to have the door open, to bound down into the garden. 
“This is life!” he seemed to say in every quick movement. 

“Mickey, shall we go for the mail?” and Mickey was 
at the door. 


So began the second summer of Mickey’s life, a happy, 
contented summer of simple joys and adventures. 

Mickey had taken his cue: he was the intimate house 
dog, the day and night comrade of the two who loved 
him, neither mere pet nor mere appanage. Mickey had 
made his own place in the household, adapting himself 
to the life there lived with perfect understanding. He 


175 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


knew when he must be quiet and when he could frolic. 
All summer he kept an old piece of rope on the path 
to the garage to be seized and shaken before the Boss 
or Katie, who if so inclined and not too much humanly 
preoccupied would grasp the free end and let him tug 
growling all the way to the car. Then it was dropped 
to be picked up again on the return journey to the house. 
Sometimes he played tricks on the Boss, disappearing be¬ 
hind the garage and not coming when the horn was 
sounded so that the car set off without him, to be over¬ 
taken before it had rolled down the long hill. Mickey 
would come racing and panting to the step, confident 
that the driver would slow down and open the door. 
He would leap to his place with an air of great satisfac¬ 
tion such as a small boy shows when he has flipped a 
passing street car. Occasionally he evaded the errand 
altogether and spent the interval with Buddy next door, 
to emerge from the wood path on the return of the car 
with an excessive demonstration of welcome, intended 
to cover up his delinquency. His idea, no doubt, was 
that he went with the Boss for the mail and on other 
errands because the Boss liked to have him along, but 
the Boss must realize that the daily errands became stale, 
especially when he was left to “mind the car” for a long 
time in summer heat while the Boss went about his 
varied business. So when the whim took him, Mickey 
just “sidestepped” the business in his own way. And the 
Boss who liked Mickey’s individuality, his whimsical 
variations of conduct, understood and did not scold him. 


176 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


They were great friends, more this second summer 
than ever before. After an absence during which Mickey 
had greatly missed the Boss, he elected to sleep hence¬ 
forth on his bed and established himself there early every 
evening, first scratching busily an imaginary hole to lie 
in. The Boss found him curled up in a soft round ball 
at the foot of his bed. Mickey would open a sleepy eye 
and yawn, saying plainly, “I wish you would come to 
bed and put out that blinding light.” 


177 


Chapter XII 

THE DEEPER UNDERSTANDING 


E ARLY that second summer Mickey received a shock 
from which he may never wholly recover. While 
the Boss was away from home an unusually severe thun¬ 
derstorm swept over the hill. As Katie reported it to the 
Boss on his return the next day, there had not been so 
much rain, but several terrifying explosions and one blind¬ 
ing flash that had filled the room where she and Mickey 
were with “a yellow light.” After that according to 
Katie, “Mickey acted queer: he shook all over and wanted 
to get out of the house. When I let him out he ran off 
somewheres, then came back and jumped into my arms, 
and I had to hold him for hours after the storm was all 
over. The poor thing suffered so, I could feel his heart 
pounding under his skin!” 

The Boss did not think much about the incident at 
the time. Mickey had never shown fear before, and he 
supposed that he would recover from his fright and would 
accept thunderstorms as he had taken them the season 
before, with indifference. . . . But not long after¬ 

wards when the sky darkened with heavy clouds Mickey 
ran up to where the Boss was weeding in the garden and 
inserted himself between his legs. Patting him the Boss 


178 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


discovered that the dog was trembling; when he moved, 
Mickey followed closely with drooping tail and again 
crept as near to his master as he could. The Boss took 
him indoors, puzzled because there was neither thunder 
nor lightning. Mickey was not reassured by being under 
shelter: he jumped into the Boss’s lap and straining his 
head upwards seemed to be looking for something over¬ 
head. Presently came the faint far-away mutter of thun¬ 
der, which accounted for the dog’s disturbance. Mickey 
with his acuter senses had already received warning of 
the approaching storm. 

It was not a bad storm and soon over. Nevertheless, 
Mickey’s manifestation of terror was real and painful to 
witness. The Boss held his trembling little body and 
stroked his neck soothingly trying to loose the tension 
of the nerves which kept him straining his head backward. 
When he put him on the floor Mickey ran at once to 
Katie and repeated his demonstration. 

“Here’s a new job! One of us will have to hold Mickey 
whenever there is a thunderstorm.” 

“He may get over it,” Katie replied, “poor little fellow!” 

Mickey was standing in her lap, ears back, looking 
mutely into Katie’s eyes as if he were trying to tell her 
his fears. 


But Mickey did not get over his terror. Every time 
there was a thunderstorm he repeated the same behavior. 
Nothing, no coaxing nor petting, could overcome that 
179 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


convulsive twitching of his little body, that straining back¬ 
wards of his head. Nor was that all. The Great Fourth 
approached and with it, even in this isolated country scene, 
a sporadic popping of firecrackers. The day before the 
Fourth, Mickey went to the village in the car as usual. 
Ordinarily he sat on his perch while the Boss did the 
errands, craning his head from the window to take in 
whatever was happening in the village, but this time he 
crouched trembling in the bottom of the car, ears and 
tail drooping, a pitiable object. The faint hiss of an 
exploding cracker explained the cause. This terror com¬ 
plex was becoming serious. After some reflection the Boss 
bought a bunch of small firecrackers and calling Katie 
to assist in the experiment set them off near Mickey, trying 
to convince him that this was a new game. But at the 
first explosion the convulsive trembling began, and Mickey 
endeavored to climb over Katie’s shoulders and away. 
Yet when called back he came, tail dragging, trembling, 
misery in his brown eyes. 

The Boss recalled the old story of the trembling gen¬ 
eral observed by the indifferent private—was it told of 
Wellington or of Sherman?—and the general’s reply, “If 
you were half as afraid as I am you would run!” 

Only sensitive, delicate organized creatures are capable 
of real terror, and their efforts for control, wrecking as 
they sometimes are, evince true heroism. 

“We must try to help him,” the Boss concluded taking 
the dejected Mickey in his arms and carrying him into 
his study. 


180 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


The Fourth was a torture day for Mickey, from day¬ 
light until long after dark. The Boss had never before 
realized how many patriotic young Americans surrounded 
his secluded home. There was a lively popping going 
on all day; after dark came the intermittent whirr and 
boom of set pieces at the resort not far away. Lulls came 
in the explosions when Mickey plucked up courage to 
raise his plume. But he awoke from his first sleep with 
a violent start at a burst of Roman candles, and crawling 
in behind his master’s pillow stared fixedly at the ceiling, 
from whence apparently he thought the fearful noises 
came. Again and again he was replaced at the foot of 
the bed and crawled up to the pillow for protection. 
When the light was put out the Boss could feel his body 
twitching and hear his rapid heart beats. At last when 
the fireworks gave out Mickey fell into the sleep of ex¬ 
haustion. The next morning he was as lively and care¬ 
free as ever. 

After all, the Fourth fortunately comes but once a 
year, the Boss reflected, and we do not celebrate Sundays 
and other holidays by making special noises. So after 
the youth of the village had exhausted their over-supply 
of crackers the household settled to its customary peace. 
And then once more the unexpected happened. Mickey 
was careering over the broad sands of a neighboring sea- 
beach in pursuit of elusive sand peep and gulls, a sport 
he greatly delighted in, never losing the hope that some¬ 
how he would get one of the flying birds. He was a 
mere speck in the far distance of the brown sands to 
181 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


the Boss, who loitered not far from the car. Suddenly 
from far down the beach came the report of guns; some 
youths with target rifles whom he had seen on the beach 
were probably trying their skill over in the dunes. Soon 
a racing black speck appeared running like a small hound 
with head down and tail streaming behind. On it came 
never raising the head, through the clustered bathers, 
across beach parties, straight for the parking space which 
was filled with cars. 

“Mickey has gone plain loco,” the Boss thought, as 
he saw him swing madly up to the familiar car. It was 
closed, locked, the windows shut. Before the Boss could 
reach him Mickey had turned and spying an open car 
door near by jumped clear into the lap of a woman seated 
inside. The Boss apologized, explained, and recovered 
his dog. He was obliged to drive away from the beach 
before the convulsive trembling stopped. 

“Mickey,” he said sadly, when the twitching had died 
down, “you would not make much of a hunting dog.” 

Mickey lying relaxed in his master’s arms licked the 
hand that held him, his little black face quite sad. 

“Nor would you do for the trenches,” the Boss con¬ 
tinued. . . . Mickey sighed as if to say that no form 

of killing interested him: he liked chasing birds as a 
game of tag—but he did not care about killing them. 
He was an incurable pacifist! And so they drove home 
through the tranquil woods in whose cool recesses Mickey 
recovered his interest. 

Lightning, firecrackers, and target shooting, what else 


182 




LITTLE BLACK DOG 


was there to fear? The hunting season had not yet 
opened; it did not last long in this part of the state. But 
the next cause of terror came like the first one out of a 
clear sky. The big house of the neighbor next door was 
to be moved back some distance up the hill and workmen 
were busy digging the new cellar. Not much digging in 
Maine can be done without encountering a bit of ledge, 
and so one morning a workman appeared at the kitchen 
door with the news that a blast was about to be touched 
off. Was everyone inside? Mickey was very much in¬ 
side! Before the young man had come down from the 
excavation he had jumped up on a chair and thence 
across to the Boss’s work table landing lightly between 
the typewriter and the Boss, where he stood tail drooping. 

“What is it this time, Mick?” the Boss inquired im¬ 
patiently. 

For reply Mickey nestled into his master’s lap, ears 
reaching back, listening for the dreaded sound. When 
it came with a rush followed by a shower of small stones 
Mickey looked at his master, as if annoyed,— 

“That is the matter—enough!” his brown eyes said. 

It was a large cellar and the site chosen was mostly 
ledge. So the blasting continued several times a day, 
and after the ledge had been demolished there was a long 
winding ditch to be excavated with dynamite. For weeks 
the racket went on at intervals. 

It was hardly necessary for the contractor on the job 
to notify the household of the coming blast as he punctil¬ 
iously did each time, for Mickey seemed to have advance 
183 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


information. He might be lying under the lounge waiting 
for the Boss to finish his work; he might even be snoozing 
away the interval; suddenly he would start upright, listen, 
and come straight across the room, jump to the table and 
insert himself between his master and the typewriter. 
Nothing could dissuade him. He had evidently decided 
what was the safest position, and there he must take refuge. 
It was his dugout! 

How he knew so accurately, so unerringly, when the 
disturbance was to happen, it was impossible to say. Of 
course he often ran about “the works,” as we called the 
excavation; he knew all the workmen (who enticed him 
with bits from their luncheon boxes). He was on spe¬ 
cially good terms with the foreman, an old friend. Yet 
Mickey could hardly have gathered his advance informa¬ 
tion from what he overheard around the drillers’ rig. It 
is possible that he scented the acrid dynamite as it was 
being crumbled judiciously into the round holes, and con¬ 
nected this act with the explosion to follow. However he 
came by his knowledge, he knew! Once when the Boss 
was sorting some apples under the big apple tree, Mickey 
who had been playing at his side suddenly bolted for the 
back door. Looking up the Boss saw the figure of the 
foreman in dun overalls on his way to notify the house¬ 
hold of a coming blast. 

“Mickey knew!” the Boss called out. 

“He’s a mighty knowing little dog,” the foreman re¬ 
plied. . . . 

One morning after a succession of detonations when 


184 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


Mickey had gone through the usual technique of his 
terror behavior, being comforted and finally appeased, 
the Boss rose from his chair and took his hat and cane. 
Mickey jumped after him, delighted, quickly forgetful of 
his distress. The Boss was going somewhere, perhaps up 
into the woods, away from hateful noises. But instead the 
Boss swinging his cane went directly up the hill path in 
the direction of “the works.” Mickey paused question- 
ingly at the turn of the path, but the Boss called to him 
peremptorily and Mickey followed, tail at half mast. 

“Tail up, Mick!” the Boss ordered, and Mickey obe¬ 
diently curled his black plume over his rump. “Now 
forward, march!” 

Mickey sticking close to his master’s heels proceeded 
along the smoking trench where the recent blasts had 
been set off. The Boss traversed this a number of times, 
dawdled beside the acrid smelling debris, talking to the 
workmen. Mickey did not flinch. Perhaps he knew well 
enough that the danger was over for the present; per¬ 
haps he had enough confidence in the Boss to go wherever 
he went with curled tail and head erect. That is what 
the Boss liked to believe. And he made a point of vis¬ 
iting the scene of terror as soon after an explosion as 
he could reach the scene with Mickey at his heels. It can¬ 
not be said that Mickey came to like dynamite or became 
indifferent to the explosions, but the crisis of terror did 
not last so long as it had and was less acute. He might 
never become a good trench fighter, but the Boss hoped 
he would never have the chance to exercise that peculiar 
185 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


virtue. And he had learned to control the instinctive 
reactions of his nerves to some extent, which is the 
most that can be expected from man or beast. 

The experience of Mickey’s terrors brought master and 
dog closer together, into a deeper understanding. One 
could not hold that small quivering body, suffering from 
the dreaded assaults of the unknown, without sympathy, 
pity. Thus our ancestors in a not too remote age suffered 
the horrors of terror from the ordinary phenomena of 
nature—shooting stars, lightning bolts, volcanic fires. 
With their human imaginations they invented explana¬ 
tions, myths and religions, as preposterous often as the 
terrors themselves, for refuge. Mickey had not the ca¬ 
pacity to fool himself thus nor to quiet his nerves with 
the aid of his imagination. He was exposed to the full 
fury of his fears. Yet never would they bear him in any 
access of terror to forget his love and faith in his human 
friends. He would suffer the worst for them, with them. 
There was something in him superior to terror, and that 
was a complete devotion to and trust in those he loved. 

It was this that the Boss felt when he watched Mickey 
in his accesses of fear—the appealing faith he had in 
those he cared for, his instinctive turning to them as 
his only protectors against disaster. A dog’s love! Is 
there anything that more fully expresses what we feel 
the devotion of one being to another may be? Never 
faltering, never doubting, complete! . . . Mickey 

knew in his way that the Boss and Katie lived in another 
world, largely outside his, where apparently the terrors 
186 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


that beset him, the uncertainties, did not exist. How 
much he exaggerated the immunity of his Gods! At the 
time when he was struggling with his panic, millions of 
men and women all over the world were shaking with 
fears of unseen calamities, of destitution, want, degrada¬ 
tion. Most sentient beings must live not far removed 
from the reach of some fear. Only the callous and the 
superbly stoic can confront life without an occasional 
twinge of abject terror, not so very different from Mickey’s. 
Therefore it behooves these superior human beings to 
walk humbly and show compassion towards their fellows 
—and to imitate Mickey’s obedient courage when de¬ 
manded of them, and his readiness to forget his fears, 
to taste whatever good thing life may offer them in its 
intervals of pain. . . . 

At the moment Mickey’s voice was rising in squeals 
of joy from somewhere in the woods beyond the garage. 
He had very likely started a squirrel or a rabbit or a wood¬ 
chuck, something that would run and whose pursuit would 
give him a chance to restore his self-confidence. Forgotten 
was the recent blast from “the works,” the terrors of 
thunder and lightning, the irrational noises of fire¬ 
crackers and rifles. This was life again, which is joy, 
to be drained to its last beat so long as it lasts. 

The Big-Man came late in the summer for a prolonged 
visit. Mickey remembered him well and greeted him 
emotionally. He remembered also what his function was, 
187 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


so far as he was concerned—to walk. So from the first 
day he waited after luncheon for the visitor to appear and 
hail him. He did that every day, rain or shine. If the 
Big-Man did not appear promptly Mickey would some¬ 
how get to the room where he worked and sit there pa¬ 
tiently, anxiously watching and waiting, suggesting in 
every motion of his body clearly enough what he wanted. 
When at last the visitor rose from his writing table and 
saying, “Well, Mickey, how about that walk?” would 
reach for his old straw hat, Mickey scampered headlong 
down the stairs, danced before the veranda door—he had 
never mastered the trick of unlatching it—then in one 
long leap cleared the terrace, waiting a moment on the 
other side to get his cue for the direction, and was off up 
the path or road, darting hither and thither as some object 
in the underbrush distracted him. Away from the house 
he came promptly to the call of the Big-Man, although 
at other times he gave him no special obedience. He 
realized that for the time being the visitor was in command, 
and while he scurried far afield in many excursions of 
his own embroidering on the road chosen he never let his 
companion get out of sight for long. If an automobile 
appeared on the lonely roads they traversed Mickey had 
learned that he was expected to return at once to the side 
of the man—why, he did not know; often to reach his 
companion more quickly he would trot across the road 
directly in the path of the oncoming machine, or sit down 
in the middle of the road and look inquiringly at his 
guide while the motor car obligingly dodged around him. 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


After remonstrance from the Big-Man the two continued 
amiably their ramble. . . . 

Mickey quickly divined how best to make use of every 
human friend: the Big-Man for these long excursions, 
the chore boy for odd moments of rough-housing, Katie 
in innumerable ways from extracting burs to providing 
good bones, while the Boss was comforter and protector 
in chief against danger, and also the one whose commands 
it was well to obey at once! Thus he made the most of 
his little world. And just as he discovered a special use 
for each member of his circle, so he evoked from each 
something different, some special response. This power 
of evoking affection and attention was Mickey’s outstand¬ 
ing gift, his charm. When early in the frosty mornings 
he accompanied the Boss to the works on the hill, and 
ran along the winding trench wagging his tail, the pick 
and shovel men there engaged invariably looked up and 
took notice of the small black dog, that knew each one of 
them. “Hello, Midget!” “Hey, little black dog!” 
“Mickey,” they called in greeting. Some stopped to pat 
him and shake his paw. He barked at the foreman and 
jumped on the clean trousers of the head contractor with¬ 
out rebuff. And having been down the line, he rustled 
about in the juniper thickets for remains thrown out from 
luncheon boxes, a great source for “snacks.” 


In spite of hard times and the increasing worries of 
existence, that was a happy summer for the household 


189 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


on the hill, and it would not be fanciful to attribute a 
good share of content that all its inmates felt to one small 
black dog—to his appealing, loving nature, to his gayety 
and participation, to his sense of belonging. The Boss 
on hearing from the rear of the house playful growls min¬ 
gled with Katie’s soft tones, “Stop that now, you little 
black devil! What do you think you are! . . . This 

is no game. ... Be quiet, Handsome!” would lay 
aside his book and wander out to see what the fun was. 
Mickey perhaps having been tubbed would be seated 
in a wooden chair having his long coat brushed and 
combed. This daily performance of being combed and 
brushed he considered as a game that Katie had invented 
to make up for the weekly bath which he disliked. He 
would try to bite the comb and chew the brush, while Katie 
coaxed and scolded. Finally he would roll himself up 
in his small bath towel and four paws gesticulating in the 
air would carry on a long argument with Katie. 

“You’d like to eat your towel, too, would you!” Katie 
remonstrated deftly snatching the towel and tossing 
Mickey a biscuit in its place. “Now eat that and stop 
your nonsense.” 

There was a side of Capable Katie, a gentle, motherly 
side that Mickey always excited. Watching her with the 
dog the Boss realized what capabilities she had, and for 
how much Mickey compensated in her somewhat lonely 
life. The intimates of the House remarked on her in¬ 
creasing gentleness, thoughtfulness. 

“It’s Mickey!” the Boss explained. 


190 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


“It’s Mickey everywhere,” the lady next door, who 
had returned to the hill to see how her house was faring, 
scoffed. “I suppose it’s Mickey who makes you so nice 
and cordial to us!” 

“I shouldn’t wonder!” 

Mickey at the moment was engaged in wheedling a 
piece of cake from the caller, sitting patiently before her 
with drooping paws and pricked up ears, which he had 
discovered was his most successful pose. 

“Why doesn’t he help himself, silly!” the lady used to 
grabby dogs remarked. 

“That isn’t Mickey. He never grabs. He suggests, 
and if you don’t accept his suggestion he waits until an¬ 
other time.” 

“Ah!” 

(The lady tossed him the cake, and Mickey having 
decided that was all she was likely to bestow on him with¬ 
drew under the lounge.) 

When the visitor had departed Mickey came softly 
from his retreat and leaping lightly to the lounge beside 
the man cushioned his small black head on his master’s 
thigh, looking sleepily at him out of his lovely brown 
eyes, the long dog-look that said so many things at once. 
This was one of Mickey’s softer, more contemplative 
moods when after a stirring day he was content to lie 
close to his master, chewing the cud of reflection, invit¬ 
ing caresses, which occasionally he returned with the tip 
of his little warm tongue. His short legs were curled 


191 


LITTLE BLACK DOG 


under him, his long plume relaxed lay along the lounge: 
he was graceful, handsome! 

The small rounded black head seemed a tiny recep¬ 
tacle for all the throng of impulses and emotions that 
coursed through it. Fortunately an animal’s mentality 
need not be judged from the size of its head—or from the 
weight of the brain! Mickey would have to qualify far 
down on the scale were that so! Nor should any ani¬ 
mal’s quality be judged from whether it speaks or barks 
or growls, whether it has a smooth or hairy skin, whether 
it has mastered the intricacies of door latches and binomial 
theorems. In response to the flow of articulate sounds 
around him Mickey was developing a variety of vocal ex¬ 
pressions, a gamut of playful and tender or sharp and 
peremptory barks and growls and whimpers with which 
he cunningly expressed a wide range of emotions and 
desires. A more extended vocabulary he had not yet 
found necessary; his very limitation of speech no doubt 
sharpened his keen senses, his habit of close observation. 
Not being able to ask silly questions, such as, “Katie, 
where did you put my old slipper?” “Katie, why don’t you 
give me more dinner?” “Boss, please don’t drive so fast 
around curves!” and so on, he has sharpened his powers of 
finding these things and many others out for himself. 

Small aggregation of atoms—like himself—the Boss 
reflected; sentient, sensitive, like himself; rimmed around 
by mysteries, like himself; timid, though when necessary, 
brave; impulsive and loving more than any human being 
ever could be,—he was just Mickey, one little black dog! 

192 




JUN 4 


1931 




